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DISCOURSES 



THE BEATITUDES 



-. X ^ 'i '^ ■ ■*" C, Li 



DISCOURSES 



ON 



THE BEATITUDES 



BY 



E. H. CHAPIN. 




BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY ABEL TOMPKINS. 

1860. 



.a 



\%GO 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by 

ABEL TOMPKINS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Mageachusetts. 



ThS Library 

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IS Hil-i iS M t W i msts m 



^^4J^4IJ«^T03J 



Stereotyped by 
HOBART & BOBBINS, 

Boston. 



PEEFACE. 



The present volume is submitted to the public as 
a companion to preceding works, such as "Hours 
of Communionj" and "The Crown of Thorns." I 
presume upon no merit in them beyond that of dis* 
courses preached in the ordinary ministrations of 
the pulpit; but I have the same desire in publish^ 
ing that I- had in preaching them, -^ a desire to do 
what I can in extending the spirit of Christ's reli« 
gion among men. To accomplish this, 1 know no 
other method than a reiteration of the truth, how^ 
ever old and simple. 

I wish here to express my sense of the favor with 
which other works of mine have been received, and 
my special gratification in knowing that they have 
passed beyond denominational lines, and struck the 
common chord of Christian sympathy. This is the 
result of no intentional compromise of what I deem 
the truth. But, while I would never turn out of 



VI PREFACE. 

the way to avoid the expression of what I believe, 
I would never drag in my peculiarities where they 
are not spontaneous. I am willing the sentiments 
I utter should pass by their intrinsic superscrip- 
tion, and shall take no pains to aflGix a sectarian 
label. And I rejoice that the field of practical 
religion is the very centre of the church universal, 
where we may exchange unspoken salutations with 
the seekers and with the good of every name, and 
hear the murmuring of those Beatitudes which flow 
deeper than our dogmas, and refresh all who really 

love the Master. / 

E. H. C. 
New York, IVIay, 1853. 



CONTENTS. 



I, 

THE BLESSING OF THE POOR IN SPIRIT, p. 9 

II. 

THE BLESSING OF THE MOURNERS^ 27 

III* 

THE BLESSING OF THE MEEK, 45 

IV. 

THE BLESSING OF THE SEEKERS AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS, 64 

V. 

THE BLESSING OF THE MERCIFUL^ 82 



Till CONTENTS. 

yi. 

THE BLESSING OF THE PURE IN HEART, 100 

VII. 
THE BLESSING OF THE PEACEMAKERS, 119 

VIII. 

THE BLESSING OF THE PERSECUTED, . 133 



1. 

THE BLESSING OF THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 



Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven. — Matthew 5:3. 

THE characteristic which more immediately 
strikes us, in studying the Beatitudes, is 
the difference between their estimates and those 
which are current in the opinions and feelings 
of the world. This contrast, we all know, was 
peculiarly distinct when they were first pro- 
nounced. The minds and the hearts of that 
multitude which listened to the sermon on the 
mount were stirred by a brooding expectancy, a 
splendid hope. They had witnessed the great 
moral movements of the day, — the career of 
John and the wonders of Jesus ; and that idea, 



10 THE BEATITUDES. 

to wliicli they were so sensitive — the idea of the 
Messiah — needed but a single word to burst 
into a flame. Upon those eager ears, those souls 
throbbing with intense Jewish conceptions, how 
strangely, then, must hare smote these opening 
words of the Saviour's discourse; not merely 
letting them in to a new system of religion, but 
to a new Hfe, a new world ! 

And yet, how much better comprehended, or 
heeded, are these words now than they were 
then? Suppose some divine teacher were to 
come among us. Suppose he should enter the 
great arena of traffic and exchange, where Mam- 
mon sits upon his glittering throne, and men 
sweat and jostle for gain, — suppose he should 
enter there, and exclaim, ^^ Blessed are the poor 
in spirit! " Or, let him go into the chambers 
of luxurious pleasure, where life flows out in 
frivolity, sparkling as it runs, and, referring to 
deeper and neglected springs of our nature, let 
him say, ^' Blessed are they that mourn ! " Or, 
again, let him glide amidst the cunning machin- 
ery of statesmanship, or over those more awful 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 11 

fields where ambition plants its schemes in blood 
and builds with human bones its pyramid of 
power, — and there let him utter that profound 
truth, '^Blessed are the meek; for they shall 
inherit the earth ! " Let him pronounce any of 
these declarations, which break with sharp con- 
trast against the paramount ideals of the AYOrld, 
and, though they might obtain a reverent hear- 
ing, they would hardly check these wheels within 
wheels, or pass in among them as a living spirit 
to direct their movements, or. to glorify their 
aspects. They would be dismissed, rather, as 
statements of paradox, or the sublime utterances 
of mysticism. Eighteen hundred years still 
develop the fact that the estimates of the world 
differ from the estimates of the gospel, the fact 
that Jesus answers in a strange and peculiar 
way the question which our nature, in its high- 
est and lowest condition, — often with an outcry 
of agony, — asks, ^' Where is happiness?" — 
" What is the true good ? " 

As another remark, applying generally to this 
series of Beatitudes, let me say that they do not 



\ 



12 THE BEATITUDES. 

challenge tlie legitimacy of other virtues, only 
they exalt to their . proper rank those quahtiea 
which men are apt to overlook or depreciate. 
Everybody recognizes the majesty of justice, the 
excellence of firmness, the glory of brave and 
energetic performance. But it is more easy to 
underrate, not the intrinsic beauty, perhaps, 
but the intrinsic might, of poverty of spirit, of 
meekness, and mercy. And it is a proof of the 
authority of Christianity, of the profound har- 
mony of the teachings of Jesus with the essential 
truth of things, that in these milder qualities he 
predicates the noblest elements of character, the 
seeds of the rarest greatness and of illimitable 
power. 

One thing more. These declarations were 
specially applicable to the immediate disciples of 
Christ. In some respects, sharper lines of dis- 
tinction existed between them and the rest of 
mankind than are apparent now. They could 
more literally be classed as the poor, the perse- 
cuted and the sorrowful, than at present ; and 
the promised blessings were more exactly bal- 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 13 

anced against their actual condition. Yet, in 
their essence, in their spiritual significance, we 
shall find them adapted to all times and condi- 
tions. This significance, to some extent, it is 
now my purpose to consider. 

Concerning the particular Beatitude which 
comes before us at this time, I remark, in the 
first place, that there is some question as to who 
are indicated by the term '^poor in spirit." 
Some suppose that the literally poor are meant 
To this class 'especially Christianity was preached, 
— they were peculiarly attracted by it ; and, in 
the gospel of Luke, the passage reads, without 
any quahfication, ^^ Blessed be ye poor." Nor 
need we hesitate to adopt this interpretation, if 
we admit, at the same time, a moral quahty. It 
. cannot be supposed that Christianity attaches 
any virtue to mere poverty, without regard to 
the use which is made of that condition, or the 
spirit in which it is maintained. And when we 
consider the fact to which I alluded just now, 
that these Beatitudes were especially fitted to the 
case of Christ's immediate disciples, the moral 



14 THE BEATITUDES. 

quality appears; for, in this instance, poverty 
of spirit and poverty of earthly means were iden- 
tical. Those -who had the humility and the 
teachableness to gather around Jesus were like- 
wise those who possessed but little of this world's 
goods; and many of them, like their master, 
perhaps, had not where to lay their heads. 
Jesus did not say, '^ Blessed are the poor every- 
where, and in all time, without any moral dis- 
tinction, but for the bare reason that they are 
poor." But he turned to his own hearers, and 
said, '' Blessed be ye poor." 

And yet it cannot be denied that, in this 
destitution of earthly means, there is a favorable 
soil for the growth of the virtue and the fulfil- 
ment of the blessing. A soil not always culti- 
vated ; sometimes barren or covered over with 
pollution. There, are instances where poverty 
and its attendant circumstances drive the hu- 
manity out of a man, or, rather, crush it, so that 
it cannot expand ; drowning his better nature 
in the appetites, or tormenting him with the 
sting of bodily necessity, until he becomes as a 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 15 

l)rute; — and yet, not entirely killing that hu- 
manity; for nothing can. Enough is left to make 
the sad and awful revelation that it is not a brute 
nature. Sometimes it is aroused to that condi- 
tion in which there is sensitiveness without dis- 
crimination, — in which it feels its restraints, but 
does not recognize its helps ; and even the high- 
est sanctities of life are apprehended on their 
reverse side, — the awful darkness, but not the 
embosoming light ; the thunders that cleave the 
rocks of Sinai, not the majestic mercy-tones in 
which they melt away. No aspect of humanity 
is so terrible as swinish indifference or numb 
distress, alternating with insane resistance and 
savage scepticism. This sensual, godless pov- 
erty is worse, even, than gilded irreligion, — 
worse, at least, in appearance — more ghastly 
and sickening. And it is a kind of poverty 
which we need not go out of Christian lands to 
find. In this very city it swelters, close around 
you, a deep, dark pool throwing up the sediment 
of blasphemy and of crime, upon which this Sab- 
bath's light has cast no holy brightness, over 



16 THE BEATITUDES. 

which these Sabbath bells have rolled no wel- 
come tone. 

And, while such are the fruits which some- 
times grow up with poverty and in poverty, 
there are yet others, more advanced, more en- 
lightened, for whom it achieves no moral disci- 
pline, or works only a sullen hardness and bitter- 
ness. But where the affections are in a right 
posture, and the moral vision is clear, the lack 
of outward means giving freedom from spiritual 
encumbrances, and lessening the ties that bind us 
to the earth, constraining the soul to search for 
other resources, and to look up for a higher 
good, is peculiarly favorable to the state of mind 
designated in the text. It is easy to see how 
these influences operated upon those who gath- 
ered around Jesus. There was little or nothing 
for them to sacrifice in becoming his disciples ; 
at least, there were no impediments of pride, no 
luxurious indulgences, no barriers of sensual 
ease, through which his truth had to force its 
way ; while that religion whose spirit he breathed 
into their souls opened unsuspected treasures of 



l:aB POOE IN SPIEIT. 17 

enjoyment, lifted them above their material 
necessities, and enriched them with the treasures 
of faith and of hope. And thus is it now. If 
the poor man's earthly lot is hard, it makes more 
welcome the suggestions of heaven. The stric- 
tures of necessity, the sharp mockeries of disap- 
pointment, fill him with a sense of dependence, 
and put his soul in a position to wait upon God. 
He has his peculiar temptations ; yet, so long as 
they do not pin him flown and imprison him, they 
do not cause him to become fascinated with the 
world. His upward escape from it is easier than 
for the rich man. Eternal splendors stream 
clearer through the rents in his earthly fortune, 
•and divine visitants have a readier access to him. 
His wealthy brother is shut in with comfort, and 
forms of luxurious obeisance stand around his 
bed. But what though his couch be the bare 
earth, and his canopy the sky? The more 
immediately is he enfolded by the sanctities that 
environ our mortal lot. His stony pillow may 
become, like Jacob's, the foot of a celestial lad- 
der — the landing-place of angels. 
2 



18 THE BEATITUDES. 

We discover, theiij the significance of tliis 
Beatitude; even when applied to the literally 
poor, in the case of those to whom it was orig- 
inally addressed, and in the usual tendencies 
of this condition at all times. The poor, far 
more than the rich, did become the disciples of 
Jesus; and the poor, on the whole, are more 
likely than the rich to become so. In the gos- 
pel, there is no special antagonism to wealth in 
itself, there is nothing that encourages hatred 
or jealousy of wealthy men. There is a spirit 
in it which must yet greatly modify our social 
relations, and push into startling prominence 
this great question of rich and poor, of poverty 
and destitution. But it furnishes no fuel for 
the anarchist. It guards the foundations of 
social stability, it renders due honor to indus- 
try, and permits us to recognize well-earned 
wealth as a symbol of dignity and power. Nay, 
in the condition of those who are successful in 
life, it indicates the opportunity of a profounder 
discipUne than is afforded by poverty. In the 
case of the young man who went away sorrowful 



ME POOR m spmiT. 19 

because he had great possessions, the Saviour 
does not say that it is impossible for the wealthy 
to gain eternal life, but '^How hardly shall 
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
heaven; " thereby indicating not only the reluc- 
tance of such, but a great moral occasion ; for, 
in proportion to the difficulty of the endeavor is 
the glory of the achievement. And it is so. 
The rich man who complies with the terms of 
discipleship is a stronger man than he who 
glides- into them almost by the sheer pressure of 
poverty. 

But the fact that, while poverty of spirit is 
thus naturally joined with destitution of earthly 
means, it is not confined to this condition, leads 
us to look for a more comprehensive meaning in 
this Beatitude than that which limits it to the 
literally poor. It should be considered as refer- 
ring not so much to outward circumstances as 
to an inward state, a spiritual characteristic, 
which may have close affinities with worldly pov- 
erty, but often accompanies large possessions. 

Blessedj then, not those who are merely poor^ 



20 ME BEATlftBES. 

but the poor in spirit — this is the essential 
declaration of the text. But let us not confound 
the •poor in spirit with the poor-spirited. Chris- 
tianity has no alliance with any such tneagre 
and decrepit quality. It has no alliance with 
cowardice, or watery sentimentalism. It lies at 
the roots of all genuine manliness, and the results 
of its development are before the world. It has 
furnished the grandest examples of strength o£ 
purpose and practical power. It has been the 
animating impulse in the liyes of the truly great, 
and has rolled through the veins of heroes. 

But by 'Hhe poor in ^irit*' I understairf 
those who are conscious of their spiritual wants, 
their short-comings and dependence,-— the hum- 
ble, the trustful, the lowly in soul. I under- 
Btand those who mourn not because of outward^ 
but inward necessities, and, in the consciousness 
of their condition, keep ne^r the divine source of 
help and guidance. It is a spirit opposed to 
self-righteousness and self-will, to boastfulness, 
pride and presumption. 

And this is really the ground of all true ad^ 



THE POOR m SPIRIT. 21 

vancement and exaltation, of all genuine excel- 
lence and power. Self-conceit and haughtiness, 
or fulness of soul, are barriers to progress ; they 
are, generally, the landmarks of a shallow at- 
tainment. The true man never surfeits upon 
his attainments, but probes his deficiencies and 
summons his ideals. The actual hero stoops to 
conquer. The sincere seeker for wisdom gets 
low that he may find. The scholar is more 
encumbered by the consciousness of what he 
lacks than by the wealth of his acquisitions ; and 
the saint is so busy with what -is yet required, 
that he has little time to count what has been 
achieved. And so these are driven forward to 
larger conquests. In this way the soul, forget- 
ting what is behind, pressing forward to that 
which is before, sweeps vast tracts of knowledge 
and of power. In this way the poor in spirit 
possess the kingdom of heaven. For the teach- 
able nature shall surely be taught, and those 
who with an earnest humility knock at the gates 
of holiness and love shall see them opened^ and 
shall enter. 



22 THE BEATITUDES. 

'•Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven." Whether it be an 
inward joy or an outward heritage, whether found 
this side the grave or beyond, it is theirs, — theirs 
in the results of sacred effort, theirs in the fruit 
of spiritual discipline, theirs in the more essen- 
tial communion with God and immortality, to 
which, in their very lowliness of spirit, walking 
steadfastly through the temptations of life, walk- 
ing confidently through the shadow of death, 
they have risen. 

'^ Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven." My friends, this was 
a mighty truth for those disciples, upon whose 
upturned faces fell the lights and shadows of the 
mountain, as they listened to the words of One 
who spoke ^s never man spoke. They were 
meagrely possessed of this world's goods ; they 
wore no honors ; they held no rank or considera- 
tion among men. But they had gone apart 
there from the tumult of the world ; they had 
gone apart from its eager strivings, its solicitudes 
and its ambition, with a sense of moral hunger, 



THE POOR IN SPIRIT. 23 

a craving for sometliing tliat earth could not 
satisfy, but which the teachings of the Saviour 
filled. And in this inward rest and consolation 
there was a gift which exceeded in value all the 
riches of the world, and which should remain, 
pregnant with blessing and with power, when all 
its kingdoms had vanished away. Theirs was 
the inheritance of deathless afiections, of spiritual 
stability and glory, and of serene assurance in 
God. ! what was Rome, what was Jerusalem, 
compared with that domain of spiritual con- 
sciousness which flowed out beyond the land and 
the sea, and comprehended all that is real and 
good in the universe, all that endures when time 
shall be no more ! Think what that blessing 
was which should be shared by the most ob- 
scure of Christ's lowly, faithful hearers; and 
consider the greatness of the declaration in the 
text, as it thrilled upon their ears and their 
hearts. 

But this declaration is equally grand and im- 
portant for us. Perhaps many of us can say 
that we are satisfied, that yfe have no great anx- 



24 THE BEATITUDES. 

iety of soul, and are at peace. But upon what 
are we resting ? Is our security in our property, 
our social position, our good health and flow of 
spirits ? ! how unstable is the ground of our re- 
liance, how liable to be swept away by the stroke 
of a moment ! And where is all our peace then, 
— then where are we ? Or are we not at rest, 
but stirred by a vague craving, a quenchless 
desire we know not for what ? Does not wealth 
satisfy us, nor pleasure give us true joy ? Are 
we uneasy in the serenest hour of prosperity, 
and, in every condition, conscious of 

*^ An aching void 
This world can never fill ' ' ? 

Do we know that the dearest ties of our pres- 
ent state are mortgaged to death, and that we 
need an anchor for the soul when storms awake 
and the wild waves dash ? If so, let us, like the 
disciples of old, who gathered around the great 
Teacher, listen with a lowly, trusting disposition 
to Him who spoke as never man spoke. Let us 
turn from our vain endeavors to obtain perfect 



THE POOR IX SPIRIT. 25 

happiness in any possession of this world, and 
open our hearts to the blessedness that he prom- 
ises to bestow. They who have thus turned 
have never been disappointed. From all the 
experiences of life they have come, and found 
the rest they could get nowhere else. From the 
circles of splendid revelry, from the chase after 
fame, from the pressure of life's calamities and 
the perplexity of its changes, from the strife of 
senates and the exaltation of thrones, they have 
come, and their humble faith has opened for 
them a spring of universal bliss, and lifted them 
above all the chances and all the evils of the 
world. Throwing by their sensual indifference, 
and their pride, and their false philosophy, in 
trustfulness and lowliness and earnest desire, 
they have been caught up into a kingdom that is 
not of this world, and which alone is completely 
fitted to the need and the aspirations of an 
immortal nature. 

Yes, ye who have sought happiness in all the 
methods of this world, there is still one method 
which is above the world, — which promises rest, 



26 THE BEATITUDES. 

and never-ending progress, and enduring posses- 
sion. To obtain this, it is required that you 
should become conscious of your need, and trust- 
ful in the help that is proffered you. Cast off 
the garments of frivolity, put away the reluc- 
tance of a hard worldliness and a proud self- 
will, come as little children to the Master's feet. 
Poor man, thine shall be a domain so wide, so 
full of wealth, that your poverty will become 
glorified, and your wretched estate as a celestial 
throne, and yours shall be the kingdom of 
heaven. ! rich man, thine shall be that se- 
cure possession which rises above all the muta- 
tion of houses and lands ; a treasure that suffers 
no canker and no loss; a good that remains 
when death's cold hand shall strike every mate- 
rial thing from your grasp, — for, if thine is 
this loyal and lowly spirit, thine is the kingdom 
of heaven. 



II. 

THE BLESSING OF THE MOURNERS. 



Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall be comforted.— 
Matthew 5:4. 

I HAVE already observed that these declara- 
tions of Jesus were specially fitted to his 
immediate disciples. Those who thus early 
embraced his cause were, in a particular sense, 
mourners. They were called upon to encounter 
sharp afflictions, to part with earthly goods, to 
sever the dearest ties, to confront death. More- 
over, those who professed faith in the gospel, 
generally speaking, were not those at ease among 
the luxuries of this life, — the caressed and the 
successful, — but those who were familiar with the 
roughness and the bitterness of the world. These 



28 THE BEATITUDES. 

were in a more favorable position to hear those 
words of wondi^ous power that fell from the lips 
of JesuSj and that entered the weary heart with 
illimitable suggestion and enduring peace. 

But the terms of this Beatitude are not so lit- 
erally connected with discipleship now as then. 
At leastj the text does not imply that all glad- 
ness is irreligious or unreligious, or that the true 
view and practice of life is a gloomy one. Glad- 
ness and joy are spoken of, elsewhere, in a way 
that contradicts this conception ; and the precept 
is, ^^ Rejoice evermore." Even in the instance 
before us, mourning is not referred to as a per- 
manent or a peculiarly sacred condition, but as a 
transition state. It is not said '-Blessed are 
they that mourn, because they raourn^'' but 
because they shall be comforted. Mourning is 
consecrated, as leading to higher and profounder 
joy. And in the general spirit of true religion 
we find no encouragement for fixed melancholy 
or asceticism, but a disposition which throws 
over life and the universe a tempered yet serene 
and cheering light. 



THE MOtJENERg. ^9 

Butj vrhile the text was peculiarly adapted 
to those early disciples,---- while they, especially^ 
were the mourning, and should be comforted, 
not only in the course of events and in the future 
life, but in the intrinsic nature of that religion 
which they had taken into their souls,— still, it 
declares a general truth, which, at least in this 
lower world, it is probable will always have its 
application. 

And I observe, in the first place, that the 
"Words under consideration declare a great law of 
human life and experience. If we take the text 
apart from its precise meaning in this place, and 
interpret it generally, I may say that, in the 
ordinary course of things, it has a two-fold illus- 
tration. It is true, as a rule, that they who 
mourn are comforted. As it is ordained, in the 
arrangements of a beneficent Providence, that no 
pain shall be without its relief, so there is no 
sorrow without its mitigation. They may be so 
intense, indeed, that the body or the mind shall 
break down under them ; but I speak of conscious 
and permanent suffering. And I say, if there is 



80 THE BJEAflTUBSS. 

a case of this kind, fixed arid without relief, it 
is rare — it is an exception. In the onset of the 
calamity all may be dark. The incident smites 
all the senses, and the entire man is paralyzed. 
But, gradually, light tinges the gloom, — some 
spring of consolation wells up in the bosom of 
grief. Time exerts its healing processes, new 
interests open, or the purified vision discerns uses 
and blessings where at first it saw nothing but 
disappointment and woe. In some way the 
wounded spirit is stayed, so that it is not left 
utterly disconsolate, so that it is enabled to en- 
dure and to move onward. Life, in fact, is a 
series of alternations. It flows more or less 
equably, in ripples or in waves ; but there are 
interruptions to its sorrows, as well as its joys. 
If, at any time, ours is full and complete happi- 
ness, do we not hold it tremulously, with a wise 
fear, in the very intensity of the enjoyment fore- 
boding change, as in the perfectly clear sky we 
argue the storm? So, athwart the present 
trouble there lies some interval of peace and 
hope ; and often does it prove true that, though 



m]E MOUHNERS. 81 

" weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh 
in the morning." 

But another illustration of the declaration in 
the text, considered as a law of human life, is 
unfolded in the fact that some of the best ele- 
ments of character, the richest fruits of expe- 
rience, are born in adversity ; and, in this sense, 
they who mourn, who pass through the discipline 
of disappointment and affliction, are blessed. 
Let any one, taking up the sum-total of his life, 
consider what instances have been the most prof- 
itable to him, in which he has gathered into his 
soul the most strength and wisdom, — and, as a 
general thing, I think he will find that these did 
not occur in what he called his '' brightest mo- 
ments;" not in the full sweep of prosperity; 
but, if he has accumulated any profound expe- 
rience, it has been in disappointment and failure, 
in defeated plans and in mortifications, in the 
low valley of humiliation, and at times under the 
shadow of death. In this light, the existence of 
sorrow and suffering appears beautifully consist- 
ent. Those events which, at the time of their 



82 THE BEAfll^tJBES* 

occurrence, seemed only dark and incongruous^ 
when we gather up the elements of our life into 
unity, when we study it as a whole, tested 3y a 
spiritual purpose, are seen to have contributed 
the most solid results to moral achievement and 
to character. And perhaps these adverse events 
are thus efficient because they are interruptions, 
and not continuous experiences. A life of un* 
varying sadness and calamity would, probably, 
prove as unprofitable as a life of perpetual hilar- 
ity and success. It is quite likely that we shall 
find as little religious sensitiveness among those 
whose lives are entirely hemmed round by adver- 
sity, as with those who are surrounded by riches 
and honors, and whose existence is a constant 
flow of ease. Such appears to have been Agur's 
thought, when he prayed to be kept from either 
extreme. If, on the one hand, men are blinded 
by the good of this life, on the other they 
are so crushed by material necessities that they 
cannot rise into a spiritual atmosphere. Their 
entire activity is excited by the call of daily 
wants, or they glide on in sluggish indifference. 



THE MOURNERS. 33 

plastic to circumstances; sullen under tlie sullen 
sky that lowers over them, all their better nature 
overshadowed and paralyzed by their lot. 

At least, my friends, we know there is effi- 
cacy in disappointment or adversity, when it 
occurs as a foil to our plans ; when it breaks in 
upon the tenor of our days as a counter expe- 
rience ; when it darkens the summer sky of life 
with the suggestion of higher and profounder 
realities ; when the soul is loosened from its fan- 
cied security in earthly good, and sent in search 
of substantial rest ; and the glittering forms of 
things that seemed so compact and solid at the 
going down of the sun, as they stand up in rehef 
amidst the infinite spaces of being and the night- 
like glories of eternity, fade and look empty. 
And it is in trial, it is in poverty, pain and per- 
secution, that the strength of the human spirit is 
tested, and its energies summoned forth, as all 
our physical power is challenged when thrown 
among the crests and hollows of the sea, and one 
strikes out with a bold vigor when thus over- 
whelmed who before could not swim a stroke. 
3 



34 THE BEATITUDES. 

Often a great sorrow, rusliing over the soul like 
a freshet, has swept away its upper-soil, and laid 
bare unsuspected treasures. Thus has adversity 
stung the sluggish man to enterprise. Thus has 
obloquy roused the timid to courage. Thus has 
the uncouth nature grown beautiful with sym- 
pathy and fidelity. Thus has woman risen from 
her drooping reliance to a heroic strength, and 
covered her breast with a mailed fortitude. The 
brilliant beauty, that only kindled passion, has 
been transcended by a loveliness shining out from 
her deeper nature in lineaments of patience, 
fidelity and afiection. That which flickered only 
as a coquettish light in the saloon and the bou- 
doir steadies itself into a pure and holy flame 
— - a taper for the sick-bed vigil, a lamp for the 
dungeon's gloom. 

So in sorrow and in suffering are hidden the 
springs of a peace and a power that can be affected 
by no outward storms. It is a great thing, when 
one has grown strong through that trial which 
melts away the dross and proves the true gold ; 
when, being driven to the handling of many 



TOE MOUiaNEltlS. 85 

fexpedientSj li6 has been trained to detect all 
tDounterfeit comforts, and to discriminate between 
unsubstantial good and that which abides every 
test ; when he has learned to dispense with all 
outward props, can let riches, honors, health, 
drop away from him, and yet feel that all this 
does not touch his real life ; while above these 
coils of uncertainty and mutation he lifts his 
naked personality erect in its own spiritual re* 
sources. Surely, prosperity has never generated 
such depths of power, such intrinsic and ful! 
consolation. And, as to what is termed a life of 
pleasure, a life of mere frivolity, everybody sees 
that it is destitute of dignity and force ; it has 
accumulated no treasures of experience, it has 
no root in reality, it is unprepared for change of 
fortune, and is discordant with the general tone 
of things. No; rather, blessed are they that 
mourn, — who, by the breaking up of some ease, 
have sunk into profounder depths of wisdom, — 
who, by the cost of sacrifice, have gained a richer 
good; for thus comes all real knowledge, all 
genuine power, whether of the intellect ^r of the 



B6 THE BEATITUDES. 

heart — the scholar's vigil, the philanthropist's 
self -surrender J or the saint's obedience. Thus 
out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls ; 
thus the most massive characters are seamed with 
scars ; thus have martyrs put on their coronation- 
robes glittering with fire; thus, through their 
tears, have the sorrowful first seen the gates of 
heaven. And in this inward joy, this fulness of 
peace born of storms, they have been comforted. 
But, while thus the text really declares a 
great general law, our Lord had a more specific 
meaning in these words, not only in reference to 
his immediate disciples, but to all who act from 
the spirit and who cherish the truths of his 
religion. With this qualification, we need not 
be precise in determining whether by those that 
*' mourn" he meant, as some say, those who 
mourn on account of their afflictions^ or those 
who mourn on account of their sins. We may 
believe that the Beatitude extends to both these 
conditions. In the first place, as I remarked in 
regard to poverty in the preceding discourse, it 
is evident that the blessing presupposes some 



THE MOURNERS. 37 

moral quality. There are different kinds of 
mourning. Some men lament the failure of 
guilty schemes, or are afflicted not with a peni- 
tent and healing, but with an ungodly sorrow ; 
experiencing calamities that ensue from their 
own follies and vices. Some mourn in a chafed 
and irritated spirit. There is a great deal of 
sorrow in the world which is not like Mary's 
grief for Lazarus, nor like the penitent woman's 
tears, but 'which is an unholy and unblessed sor- 
row, rising from marts, and fields, and inner 
chambers, like weeping and wailing and gnash- 
ing of teeth. It is the mourning of incapacitated 
sensuality and wild passion ; it is the mourning 
of the gray-headed voluptuary, of the miser over 
his vanished gold, of ambition upon its island- 
rock looking back over bloody battle-fields and 
blasted schemes ; of thousands in the common 
ways of hfe, who sorrow for their loss without 
regard to its moral relations, and who know not 
where to look for help. There are many who 
mourn not in a way which is calculated to make 
them better, but who, in their bitterness, and 



88 THE BEATITUDES. 

murmuring, and utter despair, are, rather, made 
worse. 

It is evident, then, that the specific application 
of the Beatitude is not to this kind of mourning, 
but, I repeat, to those who mourn in the spirit, 
and in reference to the truths of the gospel. 
And let me say, in the first place, that it applies 
to those who mourn on account of their sins, 
who feel their moral delinquency, and who, with 
penitent regret, strive for amendment.' And, my 
friends, it is a sad thing if there are any of us 
who never have thus mourned. For it indicates 
but a vague and superficial conception of our 
own inner wants and real welfare. It shows 
either unconsciousness or indiSerence respecting 
our relations to God. These experiences would 
soon bring us to the fact of our sinfulness, of 
our spiritual weakness and deceit, — of the great 
chasm between our conceptions and our attain- 
ments, our obligations and our performances. 
Who can look within, and lay open the depths of 
his own spirit, and not find that which should 
cause him to mourn, — the perverted capacitieSj 



THE MOURNERS. 39 

the unused powers, the violated ideals, the spe- 
cious motives, the enthroned passions ? Who can 
stop these wheels of worldly action, in whose con- 
stant click and jar reflection and remonstrance 
are drowned, and not hear the still, small voice 
of conscience? And who, looking away from 
himself, can consider the character and the deal- 
i^Lgs of his God, — the unfailing love that has 
spread round about him continually, the bounty 
that has attended upon his waywardness, the 
long-sufiering that has borne with his repeated 
guilt, the tender, pleading, unspeakable mercy 
that from the face of the Crucified beams upon 
him in all his sins, — who, that has any moral 
sensitiveness, any pulse of his manhood left, can 
do this, and not mourn ? 

Blessed are those who do mourn in this way, 
and who mourn not merely with regret, but en- 
deavor ; for they shall be comforted. And I 
observe, in the first place, that there is promise 
in this very sense of deficiency and of guilt. It 
is the initial step of deliverance, and progress, 
and peace. There is no greater bar to gain and 



40 THE BEATITUDES. 

advancement tlian self-conceit — ignorance of our 
real need. There is but a slight difference be- 
tween the man who may be said to know nothing 
and him who thinks he knows everything. For, 
in either case, we may predict that there will be 
no attainment of any kind of knowledge, until 
upon the soul bursts the light of 5eZ/*-knowledge, 
until the imorant man feels that he is io;norant, 
and the self-conceited awakes to the conscious- 
ness of how little he knows of the infinite realm 
of truth that stretches around him, — into what 
a shallow segment of it he has penetrated. This 
simple act of self-knowledge is full of hope, is 
the postulate of incalculable gain. And so is it 
with moral and spiritual things. A sense of 
deficiency, and failure, and transgression, is the 
spring of blessed results ; a spring which, if dil- 
igently pressed upon, will open to those results. 
The difference may be said to be almost infinite 
between the man who awakes to a consciousness 
of his sins and of his moral state, and him who is 
not awake. This consciousness itself, I repeat, 
is pregnant with blessedness. 



THE MOURNERS. 41 

But, more than tMs, those who are sincere in 
their sorrow will act upon its suggestion ; and 
for them there is the blessing of pardon, of 
reconciliation, of moral victory, of eternal life.. 
They shall be comforted. They have failed, and 
come short. They have done wrong. But to 
them is given the glorious assurance that they 
need not lie dow^n in the gloom of despondency, 
and under the shadow of their sin. Coming to 
themselves, leaving the husks and the swine, 
they need not be even as hired servants, but 
shall find a Father's arms open to receive them. 
But there must be effort, as well as regret. 
The prodigal must rise, and stand on his feet, 
and go to his Father's house. Mere sorrow 
for sin is no better — is in one sense worse 
- — than moral lethargy. ' For, if we fail to act 
now, we act against a stronger consciousness 
of our guilt. Our eyes have been purified by 
our tears, so that we have seen clearly our 
spiritual destitution and our highest good ; and 
it is worse to stop content with the mere emo- 
tion of repentance than not to come to ourselves 



42 THE BEATITUDES. 

at all. Our guilt, and our consciousness of guilt, 
are increased. Sorrow is only the preliminary 
of repentance, — it is only transitional; the end 
is, to be delivered from sorrow as the concomilfent 
of sin ; the end is, to leap forward to faith and 
duty, and to be comforted. 

But the Beatitude is also for those who mourn, 
in the spirit and faith of the gospel, on account of 
their afflict io7is. '^ They shall be comforted ! " 
How beautifuHy has this promise been fulfilled, 
wherever that gospel has shed its light into the 
heart ; wherever the tearful eye has been induced 
to look up from its desolation, from its ruined 
hopes, from the pale faces of its dead, to the 
revelation of the Infinite Father, and to the open 
sepulchre of Jesus ! How many in the great 
number of the sorrowful have experienced the 
truth of the Saviour's words, have been carried 
with superior strength over the rough ways of 
the world, have endured the sternest separations, 
and have walked triumphantly through the 
shadow of death ! If the gospel does not explain 
all the mysteries of life, and solve the great 



THE MOURNERS. 43 

enigma of evil, the irresistible proof of its au- 
thenticity, that which answers all questions and 
silences all cavils, is its efficacy in enabling us 
totbear our trials, to overcome them, to convisrt 
them into crowns of joy and springs of conso- 
lation. 

And this it accomplishes, not by killing the 
nerves of our humanity, but by lifting our affec- 
tions to a higher plane, and revealing grander 
relations ; not by turning us away entirely from 
the interests of this life, but by enabling us to 
see them in a new light, and to work through 
them to better ends. With such a faith as this, 
then, ^^ Blessed are they that mourn." And 
who does not mourn ? Who goes through life 
without the shadow of sorrow and the stroke of 
bereavement ? Who does not hold in the eye of 
memory and affection some green and silent 
mound? Who has not friends at rest in the 
populous city of the dead 7 Who does not need 
the blessing of the text ? 

Who, at least, is not disquieted by some care, 
some want, some burden of doubt or fear 7 My 



44 THE BEATITUDES. 

friendSj do we mourn because of affliction ? Do 
we mourn because of sin 7 Remember, the ben- 
ediction in the text is for those whose sorrow is 
of effort and oi faith. Effort as to the evils «ve 
can help ; faith as to those we cannot help. And, 
• with this effort and this faith, let us be thankful 
for the words of promise that break through the 
shadows and uncertainties of the world, through 
its moral conflicts and over its thick graves, — 
^'Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall 
be comforted.'' 



III. 

ME BLESSma OP THE MEEK* 



Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.-*' 
Matthew 5:5. 

THE quality here indicated is frequently and 
specially commended, both in the Old and 
the New Testament. In the thirty-seventh 
Psalm the very same declaration is made, — 
^'The meek shall inherit the earth." The 
Apostle pronounces it one of the ^'fruits of the 
Spirit; " and the Saviour mentions it as one^f 
his own peculiar attributes. ^'Come unto me, 
all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, 
and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in 
heart." 



46 ' THE BEATITUDES. 

It is difficult to select any single word which 
will give a precise definition of the term trans- 
lated ^^meek'^ or ''meekness.*' I would say, 
however, that it is far removed from anything 
like a feeble or cowardly disposition. On the 
contrary, it has been the characteristic and the 
ornament of the most heroic souls that have ever 
acted upon the stage of history. Such examples 
as Jesus and Paul, moreover, will show us that 
it is perfectly consistent with self-respect and a 
prompt assertion of individual rights. Indeed, 
without the coexistence of these high elements, 
and this general nobleness of nature, it ceases to 
be a virtue. The mean-spiritedness of the craven, 
the slovenly abasement of the ignorant, the flac- 
cidity of the temporizing and sluggish nature, is 
not meekness. But it is the forbearance of con- 
scious power, it is the humility of greatness ; it 
sparkles like a gem in the crown of intellect ; it 
beams like a star on the true hero's breast. It 
is that flexible and lustrous quality, which inter- 
fuses and which clothes like a garment all the 
faculties and graces of a sainted excellence. It 



THE MEEK, 4T 

is the spirit of^ conciliation, and forgivenesSj and 
endurance — the opposite of anger, vindictive- 
ness, and impatience. In fine, I may say that 
it is not simply one virtue, but the root and es- 
sence of many virtues. It is especially the tem- 
per of the Christian religion, and of its great 
Founder. 

Now, it is a most superficial notion to consider 
this class of virtues as soft and feeble. For they 
are fruits and indications of the profoundest 
power, the loftiest and richest developments of 
our nature. It is true that men are too apt to 
honor as the strongest and most glorious traits 
those which flourish in the lower spheres of our 
humanity, — bloody courage, daring violence, 
and stringent retaliation, — -qualities which w^ 
share with the brute, and which predominate in 
the character of the barbarian. The elements of 
our boasted culture and civilization are yet, in a 
large degree, mixed with an animal fierceness 
and a gross materialism. We admire a gladia- 
torial rather than a moral heroism; we conse- 
crate revenge; we honor the general; we are 



48 a:H^ BiEiATiTtiD^s. 

fascinated by physical forcCj the outside show 
and noise and pomp of greatness. Our ideals of 
power differ only a little in costume from the 
gewgaws and the war-paint of the savage ; while 
around our votive shrines we hang the trophies 
of a violence which is fitly emblemed by the 
crimson and dripping jaws of the tiger and the 
wolf At the bottom of a good deal of the 
bravery that appears in the world, too, there 
lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face 
powder and steel, because they cannot face public 
opinion ; and dare not maintain the true dignity 
of their nature, because a false and conventional 
honor calls for blood. Often, those who ar^ 
termed the strongest men, and men of spirit, are 
cravens in conscience, the fools of custom, the 
bond-slaves of the world, who know not how to 
meet an insult except by an injury, and who 
strive to overcome evil with evil. 

Now, Christianity presents us with a conception 
of power and of human achievement altogether 
different from this, and possessing a profounder 
reality. That is not a strong nature which is 



ME MEEK. 49 

borne down from without, and whicli cannot 
command its own passions. It is easier to be 
angry than to hold our temper. Vindictiveness 
is but a spiteful weakness ; and physical courage, 
often, is nothing more than blind instinct, or 
muscular hardihood. It requires more might 
for endurance than for action; for forgiveness 
than for revenge : for contentment than for fret- 
ful complaint or giddy enterprise. These are 
the products of a strenuous discipline, of an in- 
spiration which flows through the highest inlets 
of our being. The truest power and greatness 
is spiritual,— is manifest in the nature that rises 
superior to all physical force ; that subdues it by 
patience, love and faith ; that is brave enough to 
pardon an offence, rich enough to render good 
far evil ; that has chastened all its passions ; that 
has dismissed its vanity, and rebuked its pride, 
and called in its ambition ; a nature in which 
there are no clashing impulses, no lawless 
explosions, but where every true energy com- 
bines, beating harmoniously together in thfe 
compact symmetry of a righteous soul. The 
4 



50 THE BEATITUDES. 

mightiest agents in the natural world are the 
stillest and most enduring. Not the swift cur- 
rents of electric force, but the law of gravity, 
which binds them about and holds them to its 
centre. Not the tempest and the torrent, but 
the immovable mountains, against which the 
clouds dash and break away, and upon whose 
brow the sunshine sleeps. It is so in art. By 
the instinct of genius, the best ideals of majesty 
and strength are represented, not in the gladia- 
tor, or the writhing Laocoon, but in the martyr, 
calm under his coronet of fire, and in the tearful 
face of resignation brightening into joy. And 
it is so with the types of human character. 
The highest appears not in the desolator, but 
the Redeemer ; not in the king or warrior, but 
the Christ upon the cross ; highest, not merely 
in personal dignity, but in intrinsic might and 
majesty — the might and majesty of the meekest 
compared with that of the proudest and the 
fiercest. 

And so it is in common hfe. The men of 
real strength and greatness are not the axro- 



ME MEEK, 61 

gant holders of purse and authority, the vocif- 
erous demagogues, the champions of physical 
power, or the conquerors decorated with blood 
and feathers, but the patient, the contented, the 
forgiving, the meek. For the quality specified 
in the text is not an attribute of weakness, but 
of true energy ; it is an expression of our nature, 
not in its gross and undisciplined, but in its most 
refined condition; and shows that man is not 
merely allied with the brute, but with the divine. 
And to him who is thus humble and trustful,-— 
who, in the grandest sweep of reason and the 
loftiest attainment, yet walks lowly with his 
God, — to him who is thus long-suffering in 
injury and patient under all the arrows of afflic- 
tion, and in asserting his own rights tramples 
not upon others, — to him who cherishes all these 
gentle yet strenuous qualities, the blessing is 
promised. 

^^ He shall inherit the earth." At first sightj 
this seems a strange declaration. For it may 
be said, '^ Such, of all others, do not inherit the 
earth.'' And if we mean those possessions 



62 mi BEATlltrDIg. 

Whicli the tempter showed the Saviotir from tie 
top of the mountain, this assertion cannot be 
contradicted. For, though it might be shown 
tow, in many instances, this quality conduces to 
a literal fulfilment of the promise, it must be 
said that the actual possession of the earth — of 
its crowns, and ho?iors, and wealth, its broa(J 
territories and rich empires-^ has fallen to the 
tinscTupulous and the violent. The green earthy 
which the gfeat Father spread out for all his 
children, over whose hills, and valleys, and for- 
ests, and sounding seas, ^^the morning stargf 
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy/' — -the crimson waves of conquest have 
rolled over it, it is bro&en by mouMs of battle^ 
and strewed with the wreck ef thrones. It ha^ 
been the foot-stool of tyrants, the spoil of ambi- 
tion, the purchase of blood, and the task-field of 
slaves. Kor even yet can it be called the pos- 
session of the meek, nor their peculiar object. 
Still it is the prey of the scheming and the 
powerful, the heritage of might rather than of 
right. To the skirts of its civilization cling 



THE MEEK, 63 

injustice and oppression; around its walls of 
ease rises the murmur of unrequited toil ; amidst 
its splendors stalks the train of destitution ; 
while ignorance yet sleeps beyond the lights of 
science and religion; and famine peers through 
the sheaves of plenty. Not always to be so, we 
trust, however. For, even now it is overshad- 
owed by colossal antagonisms, where the good 
advances to meet the evil, the right the wrong. 
Even now it is tinged with streaks of a better 
day. 

But, in order to apprehend the blessing set 
forth in the text, we must understand that to 
^ inherit the earth " was, among the Jews, a 
proverbial expression. While they sojourned in 
the wilderness, the great object of desire — the 
goal of all their pilgrimage and their eflfort — 
was the Land of Canaan, as, after their posses- 
sion of it, it was to them the most precious heri- 
tage. Hence arose this form of speech ; and to 
inherit the earth, or the land, was a phrase em- 
ployed to signify ^Hhe highest good," ^Hhe 
^rarest felicity." It is to be presumed, then, 



54 THE BEATITUDES. 

that the Saviour used this expression as synony- 
mous with the greatest blessing ; and that by 
this common saying, this material symbol, he 
meant, and was understood to mean, a spiritual 
inheritance. In essence, all these Beatitudes 
mean the same thing ; and in this place we may 
interpret Jesus as saying that the meek, like the 
poor in spirit, the mourning, and the merciful, 
should participate in the consolations, the glory, 
the bliss, of his kingdom. '' The meek shall 
inherit the earth; " that is, they shall enjoy the 
highest good, both in the present blessedness 
and the future consequences of that religion out 
of which tlieir spirit and temper flow. Theirs 
is that broad possession, that rich tract ^'of 
wealth unknown," which lies in the depths of 
every Christian soul ; that substantial inherit- 
ance, compared with which all outward and 
material good is but a shade, in which are mines 
of fadeless treasure and inexhaustible delight, 
which is unaffected by the alternations of for- 
tune and the changes of time, which is not 
bounded by death's dai'k river, and will not van- 



THE MEEK. 55 

ish in any earthly decay, — the inheritance of 
faithj and love, and holy thought, and divine 
communion. Theirs, too, is the inheritance of 
the heavenly land, the realm that lies far above 
the lusts and the deceits of this mortal estate, 
which has ^-no need of the sun, neither of the 
moon to shine in it ; for the glory of God hght- 
ens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof," — 
this inheritance is theirs, for theirs are already 
its dispositions and its peace. 

But, while such appears to be the primary 
signification of this Beatitude, — the fulness of 
its promise, — there are other senses in which, 
without perverting the meaning of the words^ we 
shall find it true that ^Hhe meek inherit the 
earth." In the first place, because, more than 
others, they are fitted to extract and to enjoy 
the substantial good of their present estate. A 
patient and humble temper gathers blessings 
that are marred by the peevish and overlooked 
by the aspiring. The ambitious man does not 
remain long enough at rest with any possession 
to enjoy it. The prize which he so eagerly 



56 THE BEATITUDES. 

plucks is no sooner grasped than it grows taste- 
less, and is spurned for fresh accessions ; while, 
borne on in his giddy career, the good he had is 
dashed from him, and he falls into miserable 
defeat. But, while the tempest of change sweeps 
over the high places of the earth, and makes 
desolate the proud, the lowly remain in quiet 
satisfaction. As they have kept upon the sur- 
face of moderate desires, not having been lifted 
up, they are not thrown down. 

Moreover, in a contented disposition there 
exists a magic power over circumstances, which 
evokes a hidden beauty from unlikely things, 
finds marvellous sweetness in a crust of bread, 
and hangs bare walls with shapes of glory. And 
not only is such a disposition satisfied with little, 
but, under the chemistry of right afiections, that 
little becomes indefinitely expansive and fruitful. 
On the other hand, one may hold a large for- 
tune in such a way that it shall be only a burden 
and a curse. Beset with a thousand cares, per- 
plexed by constant scheming, agitated by hopes 
and fears, embroiled in the dust and heat of the 



THE MEEK. 57 

market, lie is not so much the possessor of his 
property as its slave. Mere ownership is not 
possession. Not he who has simply the mone- 
tary control of an estate — the buying and sell- 
ing, or only the material products of it — pos- 
sesses it, but he who extracts its essential good, 
and into whose being it passes, and becomes a 
constituent part of himself The rich man has 
broad acres set over agains this name in title- 
deeds and records. He fences them in, he builds 
upon them, he gathers their harvests. But how 
much of this still remains, an inalienable legacy, 
to those who possess the discerning eye and 
the understanding heart ' The permanent bless- 
ing that lies under the material form, and that 
the owner may never enjoy, — the glory of the 
landscape, the suggestion of the sunshine and 
the flowers, the spiritual significance that shall 
compose a part of our essential life, when all 
mortal estates shall have crumbled away, and 
human claims shall be forever annulled ! In 
short, Avhether we truly enjoy any lot in life de- 
pends upon the disposition we carry into it. The 



58 THE BEATITUDES. 

kind of eyes with which we see, the kind of 
temper with which we act, will make much of 
little, or little of much ; and the meek, whether 
rich or poor in worldly condition, by their con- 
tentment and faith, by their lowly stooping and 
calm serenity, will, I repeat, extract the sub- 
stantial good of things, which is disregarded or 
perverted by the hasty, the fretful, the proud, 
and the sensual. In this way the universe of 
God is theirs. In this way they derive the 
present blessing of life, the benediction that 
abides in every sorrow as well as in every joy. 
In this profound and only real sense, they 
inherit the earth. 

But, again ; the meek inherit the earth in the 
influence which they send out, in the woi^k 
which they do. ''They shall inherit the earth," 
says the text. As though the declaration bore 
this purport, — that, while it is acknowledged 
that the humble, the patient, the self-sacrificing, 
the charitable, do not hold the world in actual 
possession, in the future^ in the sure working of 
time, they will have the dominion — a moral 



THE MEEK. 59 

dominioiij the only essential and permanent con- 
trol. And do not things work to this result? 
In the course of history, those who have denied 
themselves for truth and righteousness, those 
who have shed out their love Uke balm, those 
who have stood in their lot and meekly endured, 
begin to touch the hearts of men and sway their 
souls. As ages roll on, the mere splendor of 
achievement fades, and the nature of the deed is 
regarded. The tinsel of the conqueror drops oflF, 
and the grossness of his ambition, the blood- 
spots of violence and the canker of selfishness, 
appear. Yes, as ages roll on. mankind begin to 
recognize their real benefactors, and the true 
heroes. The sweat of productive toil comes to 
be esteemed more than princely blood ; and they 
who have made grass and corn to grow, than 
they whose harvests of honor have sprung in 
the furrows of battle, and been reaped with 
sickles of death. The world's actual monarchs 
come up in the soiled garments of labor, with 
their hands on the printing-press and the plough. 
They draw near from the fields of exploration^ 



60 THE BEATITUDES. 

whence they have plucked the trophies of dis- 
eovery-j and touched the magnetic pulses of hu- 
man thought. They issue from low lanes of suf- 
fering, followed by the blessings of the poor ; and 
they control the afiFections of the race with the 
sceptre of a healing mercy. They rise from the 
red dust of the amphitheatre, they leap from the 
martyr's fire, and go upward, with their un- 
yielded truth, to shine as stars forever. So' 
speaks the inevitable law of events, — ^^Fall 
back, ye glorified Caesars and Napoleons ! ye 
possessors of a dead renown and of a material 
good ! Give place in honor, in power, in per- 
manent dominion, to the patient, the loving, the 
faithful, the meek, and let them thus ^inherit 
the earth.' Above all, in the wreck of dynas- 
ties, of institutions of old violence and cruel 
wrong, come Thou who didst not strive nor cry. 
who didst not break the bruised reed, nor quench 
the smoking flax ! Come, pierced and gentle 
One, stained not with the blood of others, but 
with thine own, and ascend to universal do- 
minion ! '' 



Mil MlEK. 61 

And 1 remark, finally, that, in this way, as 
the world moves on, as Christianity advances, 
the meek shall literally and actually inherit 
the earth. This is the tendency of the work 
of the gospel in the world. In its own calm 
and noiseless way, it is subduing things unto 
itself. it is fiUing laws, institutions, social 
relations, with its own mild yet energetic spirit* 
It seems a slow process to us, in our brief 
space of time and in our haste. But before 
Him to whom a thousand years are as one 
day, it is surely aiid steadily going on; it 
proceeds as speedily as is consistent with His 
Own great method, and the magnitude of the 
result. And there are certain landmarks in his- 
tory by which we ourselves can read this advance-^ 
ment, certain unmistakable contrasts between 
the present and the past. Moreover, this work 
of Christian progress goes on in such a mannei; 
as to demonstrate the insufficiency of all othef 
powers, compared with this spirit of meekness 
and endurance. There is no controlling force, 
there is no permanent dominion in the universtj 



62 THE BEATITUDES. 

but that of love ; and every age more and more 
clearly indicates this truth. The Spirit which 
is to sink into the hearts of men. and subdue the 
evil that is there, — the Spkit before which the 
desert shall blossom as the rose, and the world 
be transfigured with the glory of the millennial 
day,— is that which was manifested when God 
gave his only-begotten Son. The greatest in- 
strument of power and victory ever sent into the 
world is the cross. And so, as heaven descends 
and flows into, as Spirit takes possession of 
the souls of men, it will be literally true that 
the meek shall inherit the earth. Is this all a 
dream, a poetic figure ? No ; we will trust and 
believe that it is a prophetic reality, and that 
procession down the motintain is symbolical of 
the march of humanity, crying out, not to a 
rejecting, but to a confessing and a receiving 
world, '^ Behold, thy King cometh unto theCj 
meek." 

But, hearer, this grace of meekness is not 
merely for our admiration, but for our adoption. 
Are we, in our individual lives, heralding that 



THE MEEK. 63 

bright consummation ? Or, as we look into our 
hearts, do we find there the sting of pride, the 
fire of evil passion, the restlessness of impa- 
tience, the lust of sensual possession ? I say, 
again, this is no real possession. In all true, in 
all essential respects of blessedness and power, 
the meek, only the meek, inherit the earth. 



lY. 



ME BLESSING OP THE SEEKERS AFTER 
RIGHTEOUSNESS. 



felessed are they which do hunger and thirst after right* 
eousness : for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5: 6. 

OUR Saviour refers here to the keenest animal 
sensations, in order to illustrate intense 
spiritual desire. His language suggests the great 
truth that, as in every man there are sensual 
faculties, so is there a moral and superior life^ 
which must be fed and satisfied ; and the reference 
to these appetites enables us to realize more 
vividly, perhaps, than in any other way, the 
earnestness with which we must seek this highest 
good. Not as a possession which we may post- 
pone to a remote period, when we have .gained 
some more immediate end ; not as an arbitrary 



1?HE SEEKERS AFTEE EIGHTEOUSNESS. 65 

yoke or a dead form ; not as a mere ornament 
of character, or a talisman in the hour of trouble; 
but as the deepest necessity of our being, as 
conscious of our incompleteness, and emptiness, 
and deplorable destitution without it, must we 
seek for righteousness. Kot merely eulogize it, 
and profess to desire it, and lift up now and then 
a sluggish prayer for it ; but, as the starving 
beggar craves bread, as the traveller in Arabia's 
desert pants for the gushing spring, we must 
hunger and thirst for it. 

Those who do thus hunger and thirst, it is 
said, are blessed ; and this leads me to observe 
that in the very awakening of this desire there 
is a benediction. For it implies a moral uplift- 
ing, a new perception, an influx of holier life. 
The great law respecting ail men, not only as to 
the distinction between the present and future 
state, but as to their personal experience and 
character in this world, is, ''First, that which is 
natural^ ' ' or sensual. First, the adaptation of our 
nature to these material conditions, among which 
we are to live and grow. First, the unfolding 
5 



66 THE BEATITUDES. 

of the husk or shell of our humanity; those 
powers which are to be the instruments of nobler 
faculties ; this chrysalis from which our spiritual 
being shall evolve. But it is to be feared that 
a large majority remain in this preliminary 
stage; that is, they continue merely natural or 
sensual. Their higher affinities cannot be en- 
tirely suppressed. A vague longing, a brooding 
sense, mingles with their consciousness ; but 
their predominant ideas and their practical ener- 
gies are wholly of this world. Their conception 
of good is earthly, and then- desires correspond. 
Tabernacled in their clay there is a spirit whose 
faculties shall survive all mortal investments. 
Infinite depths stretch out around them, where 
their being shall run when the earth has dis- 
solved and passed away ; but all their striving is 
for objects that lie beneath the &un, and that 
^'perish in the using.*' 

For instance, with many the great desire of 
life springs up in literal hunger and thirst, in 
the craving of the appetites. The morning 
question and the evening care are, ^' What shall 



^HE SEEKEKS AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 67 

^^e eat?" or, ^'What shall we drink?" Often, 
it is true, this comes from the sheer pressure of 
circumstances. The bodily wants grow impe- 
riouSj not only by indulgence, but by denial, 
and until their lawful demands are satisfied will 
hardly allow room for any other claim ; and it 
is sad to think what numbers there are whose 
condition binds them to this bodily servitude, 
this strugglis for the absolute necessaries of life ; 
thousands who are daily fencing with death, 
buffeted by the extremest poverty, weighed 
down by an atmosphere of material necessity 
which shuts out all higher suggestion. We 
may say that religious faith would help them 
in this struggle, — would enable them to bear, 
and would lift them above these bodily ills, 
— and this is true. But how shall rehgious 
feiith strike root in this sterile sensuality? How 
shall it expand in these reeking pits of defile- 
ment, these stony arteries of cities, where no 
ray of heaven can break in to warm, and no 
holy dew distil to nourish, and where the mean- 
est wants of our nature tuo; at a man con- 



68 ran BfiATlTODES^. 

tinually, and hold him down to his animal in-' 
stincts? Teacher of this faith, missionary of 
these sublime consolations for the poor, you 
must carry into these lower tiers of humanity 
not only the elements of eyerlasting life, but of 
the life that now is. Like Ih^ great Teacher, 
who first touched the blind eye and the deaf ear, 
you must remove the most conscious and immedi- 
ate need, that you may strike into the vein 
of yet deeper wants. And ye who make up 
what is called ^^ society;'' comfortable men, re-* 
spectable men ; who shrink from the degraded 
^'masses," and wonder at the blackness and 
loathsomeness of human deprayity as it simmers 
and belches there ; remember your relationship 
to that humanity, — remember how much in you 
is the easy fruit of circwnsfances ^ consider 
how great has been your yantage-ground in 
being poised above these blind necessities, and 
do not merely say ''Be ye warmed and filled;" 
but, in their actualities beholding your own pos- 
sibilities, reach out a helping hand, that they may 
"be lifted from this confused battle of the senses^ 



THE SEEKERS AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 69 

that they may look up and see the starry im- 
mensities through which they drift, that thej 
may feel the pressure of their higher nature, 
and hunger and thirst for better things. 

But, my friends, if it is sad to think of the 
multitudes who are thus bound to animal desires, 
it is still more melancholy to see those who have 
voluntarily given themselves up to these, — who, 
knowing the better, have chosen the worse, and 
made themselves the discrowned fools of passion. 
When we consider what man is, what he may 
be in his best estate, the faculties which mingle 
in his nature, and the destiny that opens before 
tim, the contrast between the possible and the 
real strikes us with ever-fresh wonder. The 
slave of lust, the pained glutton, the victim of 
intemperance pitched by the wayside and drip- 
ping with debauch, show how easily we surren- 
der the prerogatives of our nature, and for 
what base ideals too many hunger and thirst. 

There are others, however, who, rising above 
the absolute control of the appetites, still limit 
iheir desires by the horizon of this world. Con-- 



70 THE BEATITUDES. 

sider the tens of thousands who toil and sweat 
with scarce a thought of any nobler good than 
wealth. The face of the whole earth is covered 
with indications that this, to them, is the prime 
interest of existence. It is this that is declared 
in the smoke and din of cities, the monuments 
of labor, the endless caravans and the fleets of 
commerce. It is this that is declared where- 
ever the glorious enterprise, the high aspirations, 
of the human soul are absorbed in dreams that 
haunt the night, in clouds of golden dust that 
quench the eternal lights of heaven ! Men, — 
daring perils and enduring pains such as martyrs 
have proved to win their palm,- — quit the homes 
of their childhood, the sanctities of their youth, 
the dearest communions of affection, and on 
shores where no Sabbath reigns, — where, in the 
greed of utter selfishness, man forgets his man- 
hood, — where death hovers in the air, and the 
eagle screams over neglected graves, — they hold 
up the shining gold and say, '' Behold our high- 
est good!" i. 
In ways like these, or in scheming for fame 



THE SEEKEBS AFTER BIGHTEOUSNESS. 71 

and power, men show that they are not awake to 
the true ends of their being. And, if some 
notion of it broods in their consciousness, it is 
but a nj^tion ; a dim perception, not a passion, 
not an ardent, controlling desire, like hunger or 
thirst. 

I repeat, then, it is a great thing when it does 
become a desire, as suggested in the text; and 
the very aspiration involves a blessing. It 
implies a spiritual awakening. It shows that 
thick, blinding scales of material error have 
dropped firom the eyes of the soul, when one 
really sees and feels that the highest good is not 
sensual gratification; not gold, or pomp, or 
fame, or intellectual power even, bright and 
lofty as it is, with its starry scroll and crown. 

And it is a great thing, my friends, not merely 
because it implies such an uplifting and purify- 
ing of the soul, but because the desire is one 
step towards the achievement. If the aspiration 
for righteousness be as intense as hunger and 
thirst, effort will inevitably follow. 

And the promise is, that the desire, combined 



72 THE BEATITUDES. 

witli the effort, shall be gratified. They who 
hunger and thirst, and strenuously endeavor 
after righteousness, — which means moral good- 
ness, virtue, holiness, acquaintance and com- 
munion with God, the knowledge of truth, 
the performance of duty, — they who seek for 
this shall be filled. Filled ! — that is, they 
shall obtain that for which they seek ; they 
shall be blest with the enjoyment of spiritual 
good, with the devotion of the highest faculties 
of their being to the highest ends. They shall 
be filled with the satisfaction of a harmonious 
and reconciled nature ; with the peace of God, 
that passeth all understanding. 

And tliis, being in contrast with all other 
objects of human desire and effort, shows that 
righteousness, spiritual good, is the only true 
end of our ' being. For, certainly, nothing else 
does satisfy us, — does completely fill our 
nature, and give it a central rest amidst all 
trials and changes. As man is not merely a 
creature of earth and sense, of course sensual 
gratification cannot afford him complete rest and 



THE SEEKERS AFTER RianTEOUS:^rESS. 78 

peace. He cannot lie down and wallow in indul- 
gence, as though he were only an animal. 
Whenever he attempts it, he feels a conscious 
degradation ; he finds a bitterness mingling with* 
the guilty pleasure, and detects the penumbra 
of a solemn retribution. The strongest argu- 
ment against the philosophy of materialism is 
not dialectic. It leaps out from the very 
depths of human nature. It is in the experience 
of the vilest and most degraded man, at times 
waking fitfully to a consciousness of that vileness 
and degradation. It is in the lusts that per- 
petually cry .5^ Give, give;" in the hunger that 
grows into a keener torment ; in the thirst that 
consumes and rages ; — all of which, in their un- 
limited sweep, declare their connection with a 
deathless nature. A man may drown, for a time, 
all his faculties in intemperance ; he may plunge 
recklessly into the current of sensual gratifica- 
tion. But it is his peculiarity and his retribution 
that he cannot remain in this torpor and care- 
lessness. He is uneasy; he is self-conscious. 
He cannot live by bread alone. He may not 



T4 THE BEATITUDES. 

know what ails him, or what he wants ; but with 
the mere ministries of sense he is not filled. 

Nor is there any permanent satisfaction in 
the accumulation of worldly goods. For these 
goods themselves are uncertain. The stream of 
fortune is proverbially fickle, and the man who 
thinks himself safely moored is liable to unex- 
pected shifts, which will make shipwreck of his 
hopes. As though he felt that, whatever may 
be his worldly possession, it is good only as the 
vehicle of some better result, — as though it were 
worthless unless kept in circulation, — he never 
is at rest with what he has got. Who that now 
hears me is ready to say, ''I am content with 
the property I have acquired, and am ready to 
sit down with it as it is, and calmly enjoy it '' ? 
The eagerness with which thousands will embark 
upon to-morrow's busy sea will answer this 
question. Some far-ofi" spot of repose, perhaps, 
such a man has in his mind's eye ; some limit 
fixed in the distance, at which he will pause. 
But now he is tempted to still further ventures, 
indicating that what he has already gained does 



THE SEEKERS AFTER RIGHTEOUSXESS. 75 

not satisfy him in itself. In all these enter- 
prises, moreover, the shrewd man of business 
feels his peril ; nay, he summons all his shrewd- 
ness to meet that peril, as one mishap may not 
only frustrate his plan, but scatter what he has 
already gathered. Who has not noticed the 
turnings of fortune's wheel, and seen the 
schemer who was at the top to-day to-morrow 
dashed to the bottom ? Who has not seen the 
man who seemed so stable in his wealth sur- 
prised by some unlucky stroke, or tumbled down 
by one of those tidal revolutions which almost 
periodically break up the great surface of busi- 
ness operation? In this struggle for wealth, 
is not the prominent idea that of risk 7 Does 
not one endeavor to make all sure by note and 
mortgage, by iron safe and insurance, and yet is 
conscious that all possibility of loss is not pre- 
vented ? And can we rest, as our highest good, 
in that which is so uncertain ? Which the bad 
faith of our fellow-men may destroy ; which the 
wind may level, the sea swallow, or the red flame 
lick up in an hour ; which, by a blast from some 



76 THE BEATITUDES. 

unforeseen quarter of fate, or ProvidencOj may all 
be swept away ? A due estimation of the uses 
of wealth ; a brave endeavor to secure ourselves 
against the pressing necessities of our earthly 
lot, is of course commendable; but, I ask, can 
this be our only and our chief satisfaction ? Let 
any man ask himself, Is making money the 
great end for which' I was sent into the world ? 
Did God call me from non-existence, and inspire 
me with this soul whose thoughts spring into 
eternity, and endow me with this body like a 
goodly garment, merely that I might grow rich ? 
Was this universe unrolled in such magnificence, 
and hung round with splendors, in order that 
there might be an opportunity for me to get 
houses and lands, — in order that I might spin 
my span of being into gold ? Does the course 
which I have pursued for so many years, and in 
which I have absorbed all my time and my facul- 
ties, explain my existence here, my position in 
the material creation, and the meaning of things 
about me 1 

And, surely, there are ills in life against 



which worldly good does not shield us ; in- 
stances, when it cannot penetrate onr hearts and 
give ns perfect peace. Money is a friend in one 
sense ; it can procure us much service ; but can 
it buy real friendship ? Does it not too often 
attract the parasite, who loves us not for what we 
are^ but for what we have ? Is it a full supply 
for bodily weakness, and old age, and bereave- 
ment, and the solemn passage of death ? Deeper 
than all, can it cure the smart of the sin-sick 
spirit and the burdened consGiencCj and give us 
healing in our -moral disorder ? I ask you, 
hearer! to reflect whether the property you 
hold or covet is such a thing that you desire 
no other support or shield in those trials that 
will come and must come to us all, cleaving to 
the very core of our mortality^ and blasting all 
our earthly dehght? Can yoti endure sorrow 
with it alone, and does its glitter shed sufficient 
light into the portals of the grave ? No ; 
worldly good cannot satisfy us, for we are heirs 
of a higher state. Nothing that is without the 



T8 THE BEIATITUDES. 

soul, — no external possession, — can yield the 
blessing promised in the text. 

Nay, it comes not even with intellectual pos- 
session. For the truth which the mind per- 
ceives does not inevitably descend into the heart 
and touch the springs of moral action : does not 
fill the entire circle of our nature. We see how 
often the highest mental endowments are con- 
joined with despotic and exuberant lusts. Often 
are they the allies of a bad ambition, or the ora- 
cles of a miserable misanthropy. Often have 
the brightest gleams of intelletjtual splendor 
flashed from the depths of a restless and tortured 
soul. 

And so, my friends, it is plain that, although 
man but too commonly is blind to the highest 
good, and aspires after false and unsatisfactory 
things, that vague consciousness, that element 
of immortality, which abides in him, will not let 
him rest content with any material attainment ; 
with anything that does not yield him perma- 
nent, intrinsic, spiritual blessedness ; that does 
not harmonize his moral nature, and give him 



THE SEEKEilS AETER KiaHTEOUSNESS. 79 

communion with Gocl. But with righteousnesSj 
with this inward life and peace, all his faculties 
accord, — the true end of his being is reachedj— 
he is filled. 

It enables him to rightly discern and apply 
all other good; it remains when all other good 
fails and vanishes away. He knows, by its help, 
how to hold earthly possessions, and how to dis- 
pense with them. It enables him to seize upon 
the very substance of being, so that, in the most 
essential sense, he who obtains righteousness 
finds ''all these things added unto him.'' 

' ' They shall be filled .' " My friends, there is 
a deep significance in these words, that we shall 
feel in proportion to our experience of life, and our 
knowledge of our essential wants; and so let me 
ask, in closing, do ayo realize this supreme claim 
and need? Is moral good a reality to us? Are 
the faith and enjoyment of religion, and the ob- 
jects to which religion relates, — are these the 
greatest of realities to our perception and our 
desire? Do we believe in statements only, or 
do we believe in things? Do we make confes- 



80 THE BEATITUDES. 

sion of the lip, but without surrender of the 
heart 7 If righteousness were really an object 
of desire to us, if we hungered and thirsted 
after it, we should make effort to attain it ; for, 
in all other respects, this is the test of sincerity. 
When our animal wants are aroused, we cannot 
be diverted from their objects. The wealth- 
seeker's desire is demonstrated by his endeavor. 
We see the truth of the scholar's aspiration 
when the midnight lamp gleams upon his pale 
and eager face. And that which they seek they 
generally attain. The good they pursue may 
not be sufficient for their entire nature, may not 
satisfy all their wants ; but, such as it is, seeking 
they find it. And if we do not find righteous- 
ness, it is because we do not seek it ; and, if we 
do not seek it, whatever we may profess, it is 
because we do not desire it. And what shall 
kindle that desire within us 1 What shall awaken 
in us a longing for moral excellence, as for meat 
and drink? A profound consciousness of our 
spiritual needs, a knowledge of our own souls, 
and of that good which alone can satisfy them. 



THE SEEKERS AFTER RiaHTEOUSNESS. 81 

For, while other attainments may answer some 
specific demand, may supply some appetite or 
faculty, by this alone is it promised that our 
whole being, our immortal and illimitable nature, 
shall be filled, 

6 



V. 

THE BLESSING OF THE MERCIFUL. 



Blessed are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. — 
Matthew 5:7. 

THE attribute thus designated may seem to 
require but little exposition. Mercy among m 
the virtues is like the moon among the stars, — 
not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispens- 
ing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It 
is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud 
when the storm has passed. It is the light that 
hovers above the judgment-seat. 

We speak of those whose names are glorious 
with the splendor of dominion, and whose word 
of power has gone abroad in irresistible action ; 
we speak of conquerors whose tombs are 



THE MEECIFUL. 83 

wreathed with laurel ; but, when we tear off 
the dazzling veil of fame, and weigh the nature 
of deeds, how does this single quality of mercy 
outshine their more boastful honors, and hide a 
thousand faults ! How heartfelt is the tribute of 
admiration we render, when the monarch has 
wiped a tear from the eye of the suppliant,, or 
when the victor has checked the sword and set 
the captive free ! In the entire circle of his 
works, the great poet has written nothing more 
true, and nothing more beautiful, than those 
familiar lines, — their very familiarity proving 
how readily they answer to our convictions, — 

'* The quality of mercy is not strained : 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed, — 
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes ; 
'T is mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown, — 
It is an attribute to God himself. — 
How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none ? " 

This is a virtue, then, to which our nature 
pays spontaneous homage; and there is none 



84 THE BEATITUDES. 

more universally attractive. The prevailing 
spirit of the gospel, and distinguishing it from 
all other forms of religion, it constitutes its most 
direct and powerful appeal to the human heart. 

But, although this quality of mercy is thus 
generally comprehended, it may be well for us 
to devote some attention to its real character and 
its relations. 

I observe, then, that mercy is in complete 
harmony with justice^ if not identical with that 
attribute. I speak of this at once, because upon 
this point there is most likely to arise an error 
out of one extreme or the other. I say, there- 
fore, that there is no conflict between mercy and 
absolute right. It is true there may be instances 
when the human mind will be perplexed, and 
the human heart distressed, by an apparent dis- 
crepancy, — pity drawing one way, and a strong 
sense of duty urging the other. In such cases, 
however, there need be no irreparable breach, if 
the mercy be true mercy, and the justice pure 
justice. Still, these qualities may become so 
alloyed in conventional forms, and so confused to 



I 



THE MERCIFUL. 85 

our conceptions, that there will be a seeming 
conflict. But, essentially, absolutely, tbey are at 
one, and become antagonistic only when this or 
that parts with something of its true character. 
We may be assured that unmerciful justice is 
unjust, and unjust mercy unmerciful. They 
are both attributes of Infinite Righteousness, and 
both have regard to intrinsic good. Mercy con- 
siders not merely temporary and isolated relief, 
but the general welfare; — so does justice. For 
instance ; in permitting an ofiender to go free 
from all rebuke and punishment, we do not ex- 
ercise genuine mercy. In the first place, we are 
not merciful to society ; for we let loose upon 
its interests unrestrained and encouraged crime. 
We are not mercifiil to the oJHFender; for we 
leave him to the sweep of his own passions, and 
the deepening canker of his guilt. The father 
who never corrects his child, who never inter- 
poses any constraint or chastisement, for fear of 
hurting its feelings, may be a soft-hearted, but 
he is not a merciful parent. So, in our dealings 
between man and man, the gush of impulse, 



86 mis BEAT^ITUDES. 

generous and kind as it appears, may cairy uSj 
not only beyond justice, but beyond the sphere 
of true mercy. For, I repeat, mercy is not a 
blind passion, but the operation of a profound 
and comprehensive charity. And are there not 
some "whose ^' mercy" is of the former kind? 
Theirs is the spontaneity of a spongy sentiment- 
alism, a lukewarm shower of milk-and-watei*» 
They obliterate the lines of guilt and sinfulnesSj 
and see only the ^interesting" side of sin. 
They substitute their drizzling pathos for the 
probing faithfulness of true philanthropy. They 
deplore the gloom and the iron of the dungeon, 
forgetting that in these may reside the most im- 
mediate remedy for the rigidity and darkness of 
the offender's soul. True mercy, I say again, is 
considerate and comprehensive. It pays regard 
to general and essential good. Its compassion is 
not a weak and morbid ooze, but springs, like 
a clear stream, from the heart of a firm and 
intelligent virtue. 

On the other hand, what men have too often 
enthroned as justice is not that everlasting 



THE MEECIFUL. 8T 

riglit, whose foundations, as in the nature of 
God himself, are rooted in infinite love, but a 
sentiment whose motive power is retaliation — 
that prompt return of injury for injury whichj 
regarding, and regarding intensely, only one 
selfish claim, overlooks others, and, therefore, is 
unjust* When the king, in the parable, forgave 
the humble suppliant his debt, there was an ex- 
hibition of mercy perfectly consistent with jus- 
tice ; but, when that debtor went out and seized 
his fellow-servant by the throat, and, despite his 
entreaties, insisted upon his paying the hundred 
pence, that was not justice, though the pittance 
was justly his due, and, for pushing his claim^ 
the world would be likely to say he was '^ seek- 
ing justice." But it was not justice. There 
were other claims beside his pecuniary one* 
There was the claim of his fellow-servant's need^ 
which he was pressing beyond the limit of possi- 
bility. There was the claim of that fair appeal 
for ^'patience." And there was the claim of 
that mercy, by whose tenure alone he could now 
stand up in freedom and make his demand. So 



88 THE BEATITUDES. 

we see that true justice has regard not merely 
to selfish ends and to literal right, but to the 
good of others, and the great law of love. Un- 
merciful justice is unjust. And yet, has it not 
found deep lodgment in the hearts and the codes 
of men ? Has not the sentiment of eternal right 
been mingled with elements of unhallowed pas- 
sion? In private life, what is more common 
than blow for blow, wound for wound, strife for 
strife, burning for burning, and to call this 
intense and inconsiderate selfishness ^^ justice ^^ ? 
What more common than the enforcement of a 
right in utter disregard for others, with an 
eagerness and a grinding hardness far difierent 
in its spirit from any absolute or Christian vir- 
tue ? And, in the social state, — In that fabric 
of. public order which is dear to every good man, 
and which, if need be, must be maintained by a 
sinewy force, — is law always identical with jus- 
tice ? Is the true idea of justice represented in 
that which is called by its name, when its spirit 
is simply vindictive, or only expresses the power 
of society, and when, without regard to other 



THE MERCIFUL. 89 

eads, it seals the irrevocable doonij — pours out 
the unreturning blood? This selfish and re- 
vengeful conception, too, hallows the edict of the 
tyrant, and the claim of the oppressor ; con- 
secrates alike the gallows and the bow-string, 
adopts as its symbols the '^rack, the engine, and 
the wheel;'' ay, and may legitimate the act of 
him who, for one fatal stroke of vengeance, be- 
comes, in his turn, amenable to justice. 0, men 
make a great mistake when they embody red- 
eyed and gory passion in the colossal forms of 
order and of law, and call it ^ ^justice." Abso- 
lute justice has regard to all good, and respects 
not only the claims of an isolated right, but 
those of humanity ; and thus does it blend in 
beautiful harmony with mercy. ' 

And so the quality specified in the text is at 
once firm and tender, strong and pliable, just 
and humane ; more attractive, it may seem, than 
other virtues, but in alliance with them all. In 
itself it is the spirit of pity, endurance, charity, 
— a disposition better felt than described. It is 
, compassion for men's outward ills. It unseals 



90 THE BEATITUDES. 

the springs of selfishnesSj and warms our hearts 
with regard for the poor, the troubled and the 
sick; and in this form beautiful has been its 
mission upon the face of the earth, — descending 
into the homes of destitution; brightening the 
gloom of dungeons ; bending over the couch of 
disease; following the skirts of battle, like an 
angel, and, among the torn standards and the 
broken wheels, stooping to stanch the blood of 
the wounded, and wet the lips of the dying ; in 
its institutions giving the finest expression of 
civihzation; building asylums for the forlorn and 
the guilty, opening new avenues of knowledge 
to the blind, and teaching a pictured language to 
the dumb; clothing the wastes of human sorrow 
with sanctuaries of joy and hope, and encircling 
its marts of sordidness and its haunts of sin with 
the symbols of a holy charity. And thus it goes 
abroad, overflowing the barriers of sect, upon the 
diversified aspects of nationality bringing out the 
lineaments of our common kind, and transfiguring 
its true messengers into the image of that em- 
bodied mercy which, nineteen hundred years ago, 



ran MEItClPUL> 9l 

walked oui- earth with healing for its sufferings 
and consolation for its woes. 

But this is not the only phase of mercy. It 
does not consist merely in compassion for the 
outward ills of others, but in a tender consider- 
ation for their inward dispasitions. their moral 
need and failings. While, as has been shown^ 
it is in harmony with justice, it does not permit 
us to push even our right with exclusive selfish- 
ness, but to lend regard to the weakness and 
want of those with whom we deal. So far as 
may consist with rectitude, it is an extenuating 
principle. It seeks for the soul of goodness 
even in things evil. No depth is too low for its 
beneficence, no gloom too dark to admit the 
light of its patient hope. It recognizes the com- 
mon humanity under all the disguises of sin, 
under its bandages and its scars. It detects the 
faintest quivering of penitence, or, when all is 
hard aiid dead, compassionates the more. That 
son of infamy is still a man, though his man- 
hood is crushed and disfigured ; he is still the 
t^ffspring of God, not unwatched by Himj not out- 



92 THE BEATITUDES. 

side the circle of His help ; wliy, theiij should 
you and I cast him off and stand aloof? Daugh- 
ter of shame ! representative of discrowned 
womanhood ! as that pure and pitying heaven 
stretching over thy alien head does mercy regard 
thee, — with sorrow, yet with trust, — as one 
in whom the sanctities of thy nature have not all 
perished: as one for whom, through the blackness 
and the fire, and through penitent tears, there is 
yet redemption. In fine, this spirit of mercy is 
the spirit of charitable consideration; of for- 
giveness, endurancCy and profound compassion 
for moral ills. It is the quality of a great and 
strong character ; while censoriousness, and vin- 
dictiveness, and a false modesty, are generally 
found in mea^ and coarse natures. Persons of 
high virtue are always merciful; those who ai^e 
the most conscious of power, and whose integrity 
is too transparent to be suspected. These can 
afford to pity and forgive; while others, in their 
cruelty, and harshness, and clamor, really con- 
fess their narrowness, their weakness, and their 
fear. 



THE MERCIFUL 93 

Butj perhapSj I have dwelt too long upon 
a mere description of this virtue. Hastening 
to practical conclusions, let me say, then, that in 
€very-day life the occasions are many when the 
exercise of such a disposition is required of us. 
Not merely in reference to material suffering, but 
by the extenuating word, the charitable construc- 
tion, the forbearing and generous deed, it is often 
in our power to show mercy. In conversation, 
by checking hasty judgment, and turning back 
the arrows of scandal. In our influence upon 
opinion, by stating circumstances and pleading 
possibilities. In our own daily conduct, by ex- 
ercising lenity and pity, being ready to overlook 
and prompt to pardon. The occasions for this 
virtue, however, are far too numerous for me to 
specify ; and as we are thus called upon contin- 
ually to cherish its beautiful spirit, let me, finally, 
direct your attention to the consideration pre- 
sented in the text, — to the blessing of those who 
are merciful. 

''They shall obtain mercy; " — and I need not 
tell you how rich and needful this blessing is. 



94 THE BEATITUDES. 

In the first place, I regard the declaration before 
us as proclaiming the operation of a reciprocal 
law between man and man,— the principle that 
like produces like. Tims, in the general course 
of things, a charitable man will be likely to meet 
with charity, a kind man with kindness, a vin- 
dictive man with a reaction of the same spirit. 
And so it is that the merciful obtain mercy. 
They diflFuse around them, and aflfect the hearts 
of others with something of that disposition 
which moves in their own. Their kind deeds do 
not fall upon barren soil. Their extenuating 
judgments are applied to their own acts. Their 
generous conduct hides many of their own faults. 
And, my friends, no man can say how long he 
shall be beyond the need of these things. In 
this world of strange vicissitude, he who to-day 
gives a loaf to the hungry may himself to-mor- 
row be a starving suppliant. In those elements 
of change that circulate between the cradle and 
the grave, the poorest beggar in the street is 
not an impossible type of what may be your con- 
dition. Into what mysterious circumstances are 



THE MERCIFUL. 95 

we suddenly thrust ! How rapidly, by accident 
or disease, are we made dependent for the heal- 
ing draught or the helping hand ! And in 
these reverses the strongest is often brought 
into the power of the weakest. Nothing is insig- 
nificant. Nothing is far enough below us to be 
despised by us. The mouse gnaws the meshes 
of the lion. The germ of the oak needs the least 
dew and sunshine ; and, even in its branching 
might, see by what a small instrument it is 
brought low I So the crises of our plans and 
purposes often hang upon feeble and obscure 
agencies, and make us suitors for mercy. "We 
live in a beautiful system of inter-dependence, 
where one part finds its completion in another, 
where each gives and receives. And no one 
can be faithless to the great law without injury 
to himself. 

But the sanction in the text is not only 
founded in law of social reciprocity, so far as 
outward needs are concerned, but who is there 
that is not liable to be stricken by the arrows of 
calumny, and brought low by unjust judgment? 



&6 THE BEATITTDES. 

The most innocent may well shudder when he 
considers the toils in which he is liable to be 
entangled, the misinterpretation which may be 
put upon his actions, and the suspicion which 
may assail his motives . No one is so far above 
the rest, or so firmly fixed in his reputation, 
that he may not be hurled from his pedestal, 
and branded with the most odious charges? 
And, in the sense of this our common liability, 
let us exercise a patient, suggestive charity ; for, 
in such an hour, be assured that he who has 
shown no mercy is doubly defenceless. 

But the text not only indicates our depend- 
ence for mercy upon our fellow-men, but upon 
One who, whatever our condition in life, and 
whatever our freedom from others, holds us ever 
in his power and in his debt. And is it so, 0, 
unforgiving, harsh, exacting man ! is it so, that, 
with every ray of morning light, with every 
beating pulse, you are adding to this obligation?, 
is it so, that mercy is the very atmosphere in 
which you live, and move, and have your being, 
— and yet you refuse it to those around you ? 



THE MERCIFUL. 97 

How can you raise a prayer for pardon, nay, 
how can you think of that which sustains you in 
life and enjoyment, and yet persist with your 
hard front and your bitter spirit ? 

My friends, what shall we render unto God 
for his benefits to us ? What can we contribute 
by our outward acts, by all our achievements ? 
Yet he is graciously pleased to accept the inten- 
tion of our conduct ; he measures not our per- 
formance, but our disposition. And none is 
more acceptable to Him than that which is most 
like His own nature, and for the exercise of 
which, in the trials and reverses of life, in the 
contacts of every day, and in all our transactions 
with our fellow-men. He gives us ample scope. 
And, surely, imperfect and undeserving as we 
all are, we who heed these opportunities may 
come to Him with more confidence, when we 
remember the promise, '^Blessed are the merci- 
ful : for they shall obtain mercy." 

And now let us ask, how shall we imbibe, and 
by what means shall we cherish, this spirit of 
mercy ? Not from our own unaided hearts, — 
7 



98 THE BEATITUDES. 

not from the examples and customs of the world. 
It is hard for that to credit the dignity and the 
potency of mercy, — much more, to practise it. 
And this suggests to us that which renders 
Christianity so original and pecuhar. In oppo- 
sition to the impulses of the human heart, in 
opposition to the conduct of men through every 
generation, in opposition to laws, and maxims, 
and institutions, it proclaims the might and 
the blessedness of mercy. It has gone forth 
in the world, regenerating it with this new spirit 
of love, and gradually changing the aspects of 
its civilization. But not only is this quality of 
mercy thus prominent in the gospel as a pre- 
cept, or as a moral force merely. It is an 
effective precept, it is such a moral force, 
because it furnishes a living illustration of all- 
embracing, long-suffering, forgiving, self-sacri- 
ficing charity. He who spoke the texts of the 
sermon on the mount provided the comment in 
his own life. Whatsoever is attractive, whatso- 
ever thrills us and shall thrill all ages with 
inexpressible joy and admiration, in the narra- 



THE MERCIFUL. 99 

tives of tbe good Samaritaiij tlie guilty woman, 
the weeping penitent, the prodigal son, is con- 
centrated in and streams out from the personal- 
ity of Jesus. He has displayed the possibilities 
of love, and converted teaching into history. 
If we would attain to any real blessedness. 
if we would acquire a glory before which the 
splendors of this world grow dim and perish, if 
we would rise to any actual communion with» 
God, that is the spirit we must cherish and 
exhibit. And, if we would kindle its soft flame 
in our hearts, if we would nourish and deepen 
its power, we must keep near to its brightest 
and fullest expression, as revealed in the records 
of the evano-elists. 



YI. 

THE BLESSING OF THE PURE IN HEART. 



Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see God. — 
Matthew 5:8. 

AS the heart is the organ of physical, so, in 
the Bible, it is used to signify the seat of spir- 
itual being, — the spring and centre of our moral 
personality. In it are contained the pulses of 
human affection, and the roots of the understand- 
ing ; and to and fro run the arteries of motive 
and of the will. Touch a man's heart, and you 
lay hold of the helm that steers him ; you reach 
a power that lies deeper than appearances, and 
behind reason. Thence proceed the shapings of 
circumstance, the interpretations of outward ex- 
istence, and the interior scenery of the soul ; 



THE PURE IK HEAET. 101 

for, ^^out of the heart are the issues of life.'^ 
Therein abides the real outline and texture of a 
man — his essential character; for, as a man 
^' thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

Christianity, therefore, as the divine agent of 
life and salvation for man, did not come as a sys- 
tem oi forms and ceremonies. It did not pre- 
sent religion as a charm, or talisman, effecting 
its results by physical contact, or manipulation. 
It held but lightly those whose righteousness 
consisted in cumbrous sanctities,— in length of 
robe and breadth of phylactery, — because these 
were only forms ; because they covered up the 
springs of spiritual life, and drew away the ener- 
gies of the soul, suffering the sap of goodness to 
ooze out and become stiffened in dry stalks and 
dead leaves. Still, it did not repudiate these 
as altogether false and worthless. It fulfilled 
their purpose. It cast away the mere husk, but 
it took up the intrinsic significance, and made a 
moral application of it. It did not insist upon 
washing of hands and purification of garments ; 
but, as, according to the ancient ritual, cleanness 



102 THE BEATITUDES. 

of body and of raiment was a condition for enter- 
ing the temple and the symbolical presence of 
Jehovahj so our Saviour, illustrating a religion, 
not of types and shadows, but of the substantial 
reahties corresponding to these, transferred the 
condition from the outward to the inward, and 
pronounced spiritual cleanness to be a qualifica- 
tion for apprehending the Deity, and communing 
with him, in the conditions of the present state^ 
as well as in the great archetypal temple on 
high. Because the gospel was the system man 
really needed,— because it penetrated, through 
all forms, to the actual spring of vitality in 
human nature, — Jesus said, ^'Blessed are the 
pure in Aear^." 

And, for this reason, Christianity, on the 
other hand, is not a philosophy. In rising 
above forms and ceremonies, it does not soar 
into abstractions. Its prime object was, not to 
gratify the curiosity of man, but to attract and 
sanctify his affections ; not to exercise his mere 
reasoning faculties, and multiply the data of his 
scientific knowledge, but to enrich his soul with 



THE PtJllE lie HEIARI!. lOS 

love and faith. It came not to solve problems 
in metaphysics, but mysteries in life; not to 
give sharply-defined reyelations, but to clarify 
the interior vision, and heave up the whole spir- 
itual ground- work. In short, I say, it came not 
as a mere philosophy, to propound and instruct^ 
but as a religion, to regenerate, to brood over 
the solemn depths and chaotic elements of our 
nature, until it should emerge in a new cre- 
ation of harmony and joy, glowing with divine 
beauty, and pregnant with holiness. And, while 
it is in harmony with the gxandest action of the 
intellect, while, in order to accomplish its result, 
it makes use of the intellect, and by that result 
the intellect itself is quickened and enlarged, 
the main point of its effort is this moral centre, 
this lever of the soul, this throne and gateway 
of the powers of life, thronged with motives, 
sentinelled by passions, and, too often, polluted 
by sensuality and sin. 

Therefore, I say again, because it is this rad- 
ical seal of our nature, and because it was to 
redeem that nature that the gospel was sent, 



104 mn BEATii:tJDEg. 

and because Christianity was not a system of 
forms, nor a system of logical statements, but a 
religion^- — therefore did Christ say, ^'Blessed 
are the pure in heart." 

^^ For they shall see God." Whatever may 
be indicated by the consummation of this bless- 
ing, whatever interpretation it shall assume 
among the glories of heaven, its essential result 
consists in a clearer apprehension, a more inti- 
mate communion with the Deity, now and ever, 
— not only in the future, but in the present 
State. I would say, therefore, that this Beatitude 
unfolds naturally, from the very condition of 
those described in the text. Seeing God is an 
innate quality of purity of heart. In a profound 
sense, it is true that only the pure in heart can 
see God. The privilege could not be accorded 
to those who are absorbed in a formal and cere- 
monial system ; for the sensual and outward eye 
cannot behold Him. They cannot enjoy it who 
rest upon an abstract philosophy ; for He is not 
perceived by the mere intellect. The blessing 
pronounced in the text is the blessing inherent 



THE PtRS IN HEART. 105 

in a moral faith — in innerj spiritual, regenerat- 
ing religion. 

I say, in the first place, that seeing God is 
not a physical act. In embodied likeness, in 
material shape, no man hath seen or can see 
Him. He whose attributes are illustrated in the 
play of stupendous forces and the march of 
ordered worlds, in the illimitable reach of space, 
and in every sunny drop, has not revealed His 
essence. He whose glory burns in all the flash- 
ing wheels of night has not laid bare the depths 
of that glory. He whose presence is every- 
where, lifts not the veil that hides that awful 
presence. We know the access, but not the 
recess, of His thought; the foreground of His 
nature, but not the mystery of His being. Yet 
if, reverently, we may suppose that such a rev- 
elation were made, the mere physical organ, the 
sensual vision, would not recognize Him. Nay, 
for all human necessity, a sufficient manifestation 
has been given. The moral image of God has 
been projected into our world. Nineteen hun- 
dred years ago it walked among men ; yet how 



106 mJOl BEATlTtJDm 

many recognized it as such? How many appre-* 
hend it now? After all, one of his near disci-- 
ples could exclaim, ^' Shaw us the Father;" 
and, though he hais been a long time with us, 
how few of us truly know him ! 

True seeing, my friends, is not merely a su- 
perficial beholding, the perception of outward 
forms, the image cast upon the retina. It re- 
quires a degree of knowledge^ of interior appre- 
hension. The physical or sensual eye, there- 
fore, in fact, sees nothing,-— it only takes hold 
of objects. There must be intelligence back of 
it ; there must be sympathy, and love, and faith. 
One man looks out upon a natu:Fal prospect. 
But to him there is nothing but a mass of land 
and water. It hangs as a meaningless reflection 
in the mirror of his eye. But another sees the 
landscape. His enlightened perception and his 
feeling heart give him vision, and he discovers a 
thousand instances of beneficence and beauty. 
He who sails up the noble Tiver of Europe, and 
hag before him only verdant banks and a flow- 
* ing stream, might as well loiter upon any other 



THE PURE IN HEART. 107 

channel of the globe. But he who peoples its 
shores with crowded recollections, who lights up 
its castles with legendary glory, and trails its 
vines around the fragments of the past, — he 
who pours over its heights the processions of 
history, led by reanimated Caesars and Napo- 
leons, — he sees the Rhine. When you see your 
friend, you do not behold merely his outward 
form and lineaments. You see all that makes 
up the quality of a friend. You see, not merely 
with the naked eye, but by the aid of sympathy, 
and trust, and tender remembrance. Breaking 
through the external features, you perceive the 
inner man, the warm, true heart, which, through 
long and trying years, has beat in your grasp. 
Dear memories look upon you from his eyes, 
and the furrows which time has drawn and the 
storms which life has bronzed upon his counte- 
nance are, to you, curves of grace and tints of 
beauty. In short, whatever may be the field or 
the object of perception, ^^the eye finds only 
what it brings;" and the more we apprehend 
anything, the more really do we see it. The 



108 THE BEATITUDES. 

physical eye reflects only the physical form^ and 
cannotj of itself, interpret it, — cannot penetrate 
to its essence. And, if matter discerns matter, it 
requires spirit to discern spirit. If, therefore, 
our vision is sensual and earthy, cognizant only 
of forms ^ we cannot see God. In proportion as 
we are animals, our capabilities are but those of 
the animal, who has the outward uniyerse glassed 
in his sockets, but does not apprehend its cause 
and interior life. 

By the same rule, seeing God is not an act of 
mere intellectual perception. We cannot appre- 
hend Him by logic. Our finite formulas cannot 
grasp the Infinite. The intellect can note phe- 
nomena, discover laws, and detect sequences. 
It can read the heavens as a set of sparkling 
diagrams. It can reduce concrete matter into 
acids, and alkalies, and imponderable gases. It 
is competent in the field of science ; but that is a 
field of definitions^ and enclosed by mathemat- 
ical limits. It can see whatever stands in forms 
of demonstration, and can be resolved by the 
object-glass of the understanding. But the neb- 



THE PURE IN HEART. 109 

ulcus immensities of spiritual being are beyond 
its ken ; and, when it would deal with these, it 
must adjust itself upon the poise of moral con- 
viction, and add the lens of faith. God is not a 
definable fact. He is incomprehensible; far, 
far beyond the sphere of mere science. In our 
reasoning we may be able to prove an abstract 
principle, a first cause, a primum mobile; and 
the intellect may hold that as a deduction from 
certain given premises. But, surely, not thus 
do we apprehend the Infinite Father, the Holy 
God. The intellect discerns only the intellect- 
ual ; and it is not thus the Deity reveals himself, 
— it is not in his intellect man may the most 
resemble Him. Spiritual qualities, that lie at 
the roots of the brain, — that lie deeper than the 
intellect, and animate and inform it, — are the 
discerning powers. The intellect is still but an 
external eye, reflecting forms, not apprehending 
substances, — discerning quantities and methods, 
rather than qualities. It is a mistake to con- 
sider it as the prime agent in discovery. It is 
but an instrument in the control of passion, and 



110 THE BEATITUDES. 

tinged by preconception. If we would have it . 
clear and comprehensive, it must be directed by 
right affections and pure symathies. The clouds 
of the heart color the mind, and its scope and 
penetration are determined by this moral realm. 
In saying that we do not apprehend God by 
the intellect, but by the spiritual affections, I do 
not mean to affirm that the spiritual affections 
can act without the intellect, or that the intellect 
is ever found entirely divorced from faith and 
moral conviction. Still, there appear to be some 
who act as if this divorce did exist, and who 
seek to effect it ; who repudiate the authority of 
these spiritual instincts, and would sweep the 
entire field of mystery clear with the besom of 
^^ positive philosophy." As though the universe 
were as transparent to them as a dome of crys- 
tal ! As though they could scoop the infinite 
ocean of reality into their little cups of theory ! 
As though all the currents of God's movement, 
and the headlands of his purpose, were mapped 
upon the charts of their science ! Besides, we 
see how men have gone out into nature and life 



THE PURE IN HEART. Ill 

with the keenest intellectual powers, and de- 
tected nothing there but mathematical problems 
and intellectual exercises. We have seen them 
regarding nature as though it were a vast cata- 
comb of dead matter, and pictured expressions of 
unintelligent law, and cunning feats of chance ; 
— taking in pieces its wonderful combinations, 
analyzing its textures, wandering among its 
starry drifts and isles of glory without a thought 
of God, without perception of that awful Being 
out of which these forms evolve — that benefi- 
oent Providence which holds them within its 
cincture, and'' feeds them with its inspiration. 
They have not seen God, because they have 
looked with the dry light of reason twisted from 
its moral basis, or resting upon a basis cold and 
dead. Not so with Newton, who worshipped 
while he explored, whose grandest sweep of rea- 
son was borne on by wings of reverence and 
faith, and who, in the highest altitudes of his 
thought, among worlds and systems moving on 
the' circle of eternal order, and confessing the 



112 THE BEATITUDirS. 

silent majesty of law, saw and owned the pres- 
ence of the Creator. 

Moreover, I have insisted that by the mere 
intellect we cannot see God, in order to enforce 
the truth that no exclusive sphere bounds the 
highest privileges of religion. The qualifications 
for communion and intimacy with Him do not 
inhere in those gifts which are the endowment, 
and, too often, the pride of the few, but in 
the profound depths of that nature which is the 
inheritance of all. And when we see the proud 
philosopher denying the reality of religion, and 
cavilling at its truths, let not our faith be shaken; 
for his vision, after all, is dim. He only reasons 
from what he perceives, and perceives only with 
the head ; while thousands, in the revelation of 
their own experience, know that which he repu- 
diates. In the serenity of humble trust, in the 
transparent depths of sanctified affection, they 
see God. 

Yes, it comes to this point at last, — that God 
is to be discerned by that portion of our being 
in which we most closely resemble Him. We 



THS PUiElE IN HJSAHT. IIS 

ca^nnot limit Him to any form ; and, therefore, 
He is not to be apprehended by physical organs. 
He is intelligence, — but this is not declared as 
his most essential nature ; and, if it were, as has 
been well observed by another, ^^ there is, per- 
haps, no real resemblance between the intellect 
of man and the mind of God,— between the cre- 
ative Source of truth and power, and the more 
observing and receptive mind that slowly traces 
out some indefinitely small portion of their man- 
ifestations, that originates nothing, but only de- 
ciphers and painfully spells out a little of what 
the mighty Author has written in nature. But 
in all moral and spiritual qualities there is a 
oneness of kind, even between perfection and 
imperfection, even between God and man." ^ 
God is spirit, and, therefore, can be discerned by 
our spiritual nature only. He is moral, and so 
can be known only by moral affinities. He is 
love, and is to be apprehended by deep and right 
affections. Therefore, the pure in heart, and 

* Thorn on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 

8 



114 mE BMATlfUBE^. 

they alone J see Him, — of coursOj not Witt any 
outwardj palpable visionj for thus is He appa- 
rent to none, but with that true seeing which 
consists in intimate knowledge and interior ap- 
prehension. As he who has something of ge- 
nius in himself enters into the spirit of genius, 
and, therefore, most truly sees or apprehends 
it, — as we see our friend, by intense sympathy, 
by a similarity or a correspondence of quality 
on oiir own part,-^- so the pure in heart see 
God. 

They see Him inwardly ^ — ik the' moral ideal^ 
in the unfolding traits of their own souls. The 
more we become like Him, the more surely do 
we recognize Him, until, as the heart grows 
clear and calm, it reflects Him like a mirror. 
Indeed, that apprehension of the Deity which 
every man has to some degree, and which is the 
essential characteristic that distinguishes him 
from the brute, exists in the quality of his moral 
nature. In the vilest and the most ignorant 
*hef e are fragments of divine perception, — 
gleams of conscience and of awe^-^ which; when 



THE PURE IN HEART. 115 

all outward indications may be unnoticed or 
covered up, vindicate the existence and preserve 
the conception of a God. And this same moral 
nature, refined by discipline and enlightened by 
the gospel, gives the steady vision and the tran- 
scendent blessing declared in the text. 

And thus, prepared by interior acquaintance, 
by educated sympathy, so to speak, the pure in 
heart recognize God in all outward aspects. 
They see Him in nature. ^' The rolling year is 
full of Him. 'Day unto day, and night unto 
night, show forth his glory, and declare his 
handiwork;- Indeed, in its highest significance, 
the material universe is not a collection of dry 
facts and rigid laws, is not the unrolling of a 
gorgeous epic or artistic masterpiece ; but it is 
a temple filled wiih His presence, and declaring 
its final cause to be His manifestation and His 
praise. They acknowledge God, moreover, in 
the providences of daily life. Although they 
may detect no point where special action sepa- 
rates from general law, they recognize the oper- 
ation of a Divine care, which superintends the 



116 THE BEATITUDES. 

development of epochs and the motions of stinSj 
while, at the same time, it numbers the hairs of 
our heads. They believe that ^^the universe is 
ruled.^'^ They see God in the march of history. 
The thought of Him is as a chastening cloud, to 
qualify the dazzling temptations of prosperity ; 
and in all the night-time of sorrow, and through 
the dark valley, His presence is a pillar of fire. 

Such, then, is the characteristic, such the 
privilege, of the pure in heart. Whatever may 
be the fulness of vision or the nearness of com- 
munion which awaits them in higher spheres of 
being, even amidst the veils and shadows of 
earth they discern the true good and the real 
significance of things. Here, and hereafter, 
they shall see God. 

And now, my friends, let me ask what mean- 
ing and interest has the declaration in the text 
for us? As we look into our own hearts, what 
do we behold there? Impure desires, selfish 
passions, bad motives? Or, do we see God 
there ? Do we find in our affections and our 
thoughts a reflection of His glory and His 



THE PURE IN IIEAKT. 117 

truth? A man cannot ask himself a more 
pregnant or startling question than this, — 
What representation, what hkeness to God, is 
there in my moral nature? With what ideal of 
God would it correspond ? And, in the world 
without, in the order and change of nature, in 
the various issues of life, in the experiences of 
our lot, do we realize His presence, and truly 
acknowledge it ? 

And, if not, why? Is it because, after all, 
we live in mere forms^ — satisfied with decent 
customs, it may be, and hollow respectabilities? 
Or, grosser still, are we shut up and blinded 
with sensual influences? Or, on the other 
hand, do we rest with mere intellectual conclu- 
sions? — believe in ^, theory of God, instead of 
God himself? Sense alone, intellect alone, can- 
not discern him. We must exercise those affec- 
tions, those religious faculties of our being, 
which, forever unfolding, will, throughout eter- 
nal ages, bring us nearer and nearer to Him. 
We must cherish that love and that faith which 
will render this life sacred and blessed. Then, 



118 THE BEATITUDES. 

even here, we shall always stand in His pres- 
ence. Then, everywhere, within the scope of 
the sanctified earth and the condescending 
heavenSj we shall see God. 



YII. 

fHE BLESSING OF THE PEACEMAKERS. 



Slessed are the peacemakers : for they sliall be called the 
children of Grod. — Matthew 5 : 9. 

ONE of the profoundest facts in the material 
universe is harmony ; and nothing bears 
more striking witness to divine intelligence and 
control. We recognize it as the prevailing char- 
acteristic in all things about us, — in the mutual 
action of forces, in the supremacy of law, in the 
correspondence of parts, in the method of the 
great whole, or, if discrepancies appear, they 
are reconciled in the unfolding of more general 
relations; if local defects seem to exifet, they 
melt away in the light of profounder discoveries; 
while periods of disturbance are seen to be 



120 THE BEATITUDES. 

only the adjustments of a steady plan, — the 
phases of still deeper order, from the catas- 
trophe that makes an epoch to the thunder-storm 
that clears the air. It is not merely the poet 
who receives tidings of 

'« — central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation ; " 

but upon this conviction science erects its in- 
struments, and bases its inductions. And ini 
this beautiful unity and majestic order, I say, 
we instinctively recognize the action of mind. 
They are tokens of God. 

And, if the moral universe seems less com- 
plete, more mixed with painful inconsistencies, 
and torn by antagonisms, still we may believe 
that the Creator binds all its oscillations in the 
harmony of a divine plan, and moves on to its 
fulfilment. In all His manifestations^ then, 
both in the moral and the material worlds, in 
the forthgoings of His nature, He ^^is not the 
author of confusion, but of peace." 

And the reverent conception which we enter- 



THE PEACEMAKERS, 121 

tain of His own interior being is that of eternal 
serenity; the freedom from discord, the inex- 
pressible harmony of Omniscient foresight and 
boundless power; of illimitable attributes flow- 
ing from infinite moral excellencOj enabling us 
somewhat to apprehend the fulness of the 
apostle's benediction, when he invokes the God 
of peace, and promises the peace of God that 
passes all understanding. 

Such conceptions of the Deity, my friends, 
also help us to comprehend the Beatitude now 
before us, in which it is declared that the peace- 
makers ^' shall be called the children of God." 
It must be so ; because, in cherishing the spirit 
and in doing the work of peace, we perceive they 
are like God, and their own moral condition 
intrinsically involves the blessedness of God. 
Those who possess and act from this disposition 
inherit a blessing as vast, as deep, as durable, 
as abides in a profound similarity to God ; and 
surely no external reward, no human measure 
of felicity, can for a moment be compared to 
the good which inheres in this ! 



122 THE BEATITUDES. 

But let US now proceed to consider the terms 
of this blessedness, — the characteristics of him 
who in the text is called the peacemaker. Who 
and what is he ? 

In the first place, I observe, he is peaceable. 
That is, he, in his own conduct, maintains har- 
mony and order. He is not turbulent or con- 
tentious; but patient, forbearing, disposed to 
palliate, and even to suffer. Now, there are some 
people who appear to be always at strife ; who, 
wherever they may be, are never quietly ad- 
justed. They are the knots, the ravelled 
threads, the dislocated joints, in community. 
They are quickly aggrieved, and handle a 
grievance in the sharpest manner. They carry 
a whole canister of wrath in a very combustible 
wrappage. Their spirits are thermometers of the 
most sensitive kind,— a warm breath will set the 
mercury boiling. They detect an insult in an 
emphasis, and an impeachment in a look. They 
are offended by your evident solicitude to avoid 
giving offence. They attribute their incessant 
discords to their circumstances, or their associates ; 



THE PEACEMAKERS. 123 

but it is very singular that these should always 
be awry J— that any kind of harness should 
chafe them, — that they should touch some irre- 
concilable point in every relation, and find gravel 
wherever they stand. The truth is, the fault is 
in themselves. They have a genius for quar- 
relling, and a spring of mischief in their own 
uncontrolled temper, in their morbid pride, and 
protuberant vanity, and imperious self-will. In 
the collisions of the world we must yield as well 
as assert, — must recognize rights limiting our 
own, and individualities in others as well as 
ourselves. And the texture of true manliness 
possesses an elasticity which will bear some 
pressure and friction ; and for the saltness of life 
sprinkled upon us by occasional neglect, or 
abuse, it finds remedy in an interior spring of 
self-assertion and consolation. For, surely, this 
peevish sensitiveness to the sayings and doings 
of others indicates real poverty of soul, or miser- 
able timidity ; or else a spirit which is mastered 
by the body, and lies at 'the mercy of diseased 
and jangling nerves. At any rate, the truly 



124 THE BEATITUDES. 

peaceable maiij in exhibiting cbaracteristics ex- 
actly opposite to those which I have just delin- 
eated, is not actuated by a cowardly or truck- 
ling disposition ; but rather by the manner in 
which he meets occasions of offence, and adjusts 
himself t^ others, and allays the flame of passion 
in them and in himself, does he manifest personal 
dignity and power, and a well-balanced, cour- 
ageous and comprehensive spirit. 

The peaceableness of the character commended 
in the text is not the quietude of a tame mean- 
ness, or the wretched compromise of fear. Our 
Saviour, while virtually rebuking the violent 
spirit of his countrymen, was commending this 
virtue of peaceableness to men who would be 
called upon to assert the highest loyalty of indi- 
vidual conviction, to make the most severe sacri- 
fices, to encounter scorn, peril and death. So 
it is plain that this disposition, whatever it may 
be, does not imply moral cowardice, and consists 
with the vindication of conscience and the main- 
tenance of absolute right. I cannot dwell upon 
the interesting and timely topics opened by the 



THE PEACEMAKEBS. 125 

suggestion of the consistency between this spirit 
of Christian peaceableness and the assertion of 
personal principle and eternal justice. I will 
say, however, that each virtue is limited, or, 
rather interpreted by others, and can be rightly 
defined only in its harmonious relations to the 
whole of a true character. Therefore, peace- 
ableness, maintained at the expense of real and 
positive right, is wrong, — it ceases to be a vir- 
tue. On the other hand, when rights are pushed 
at the expense of duties, when the abstract is 
torn from all its relations to the concrete, 
when individual instances eclipse the general 
good, when conscience is confounded with pas- 
sion and moral agitation with physical violence, 
here, too, is a wrong. There are interests by 
the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly pur- 
chased. One should never be at peace to the 
shame of his own soul, to the violation of his 
integrity, or of his allegiance to God. And if 
sometimes, especially in his public relations, 
there seems to be a fanatical assertion of this 
truthj let me say that it is equally fanatical 



126 THE BEATITUDES. 

to deny it, or to mock at it. The profoundest fact 
that a man stands upon, and out of which he is 
developed, that which constitutes the very sap 
and fibre of his manliness, is his moral sense. 
This alone, when upright and pure, makes him 
a compact stability in society, as well as in his 
private relations. Public order, the law, the 
constitution,— select what synonyme you please, 
r— if it has any authority, can assert it, not as 
overriding conscience, but as binding upon 
conscience, not merely as a legislative enactment, 
but as a moral d^ty. He who adheres to it by 
anything less tenacious than a conscientious 
grasp is substantially a more unsafe person than 
your red republican, or fifth-monarchy man* 
In the latter case, the element of all true loyalty 
may manifest itself with undue efiervescence ; but 
in the former, it is formal and hollow. 

In asserting the claims of the state, then, 
against the protests of the individual conscience, 
it is absurd to strike away the ground on which 
rests the stability of the state itself, — the ground 
of private moral principle ; it is absurd to 



TU^ PMCHMAKERS. 127 

make the state unseat the very power to which 
it appeals. The best men in community are the 
men who feel that the final ligature in our 
nature is that which binds us to God,— who will 
sufier all other ties to be cut, before that; and, 
if such an extreme case does arise, will rather 
sever the bond of obedient citizenship, like 
Peter and John, when the council bade them 
cease preaching the gospel. ^^ Whether it be 
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you 
more than unto God," said they, ''judge ye. 
For we cannot but speak the things which we 
have seen and heard." '' Here ^tand I," said 
Luther before the Diet; '' I cannot otherwise ; 
God help me ! " We should be careful how W6 
stigmatize such expressions of conscience as 
these by the name of fanaticism ; nor can we 
deny that extreme conditions may occur when 
it must assert its supremacy, whatever may be 
the rupture ; and that the spirit of peaceableness 
commended in the text does not prohibit this* 
But we must remember that such cases of col- 
lision between divine and human authority in 



128 THE BEATlTtJBES* . 

public matters are much rarer tlian they may 
appear to be to those who tease themselves and 
Others with exaggerated suppositions, instead of 
considering the simple fact, — who spend their 
strength in declarations as to what might be, 
rather than in calmly doing the present duty. 
I would say, therefore, that he who nourishes 
the spirit of Christian peaceableness is a good 
citizen ; he has a genuine love of order, and a 
proper tone of loyalty ; and he shows the differ- 
ence between himself and the mere anarchist, or 
factious demagogue, or reckless fanatic, when 
any collision seems to occur between the custom 
of quiet deference and his allegiance to absolute 
right, by a solicitous and devout consideration 
of the matter ; by scrupulously examining 
whether he has not exaggerated the issue ; by 
discriminating between self-willed and hasty im- 
pulse, and firm conviction, — between a vain or 
daring or malignant disposition, a personal vin- 
dictiveness, and the general grounds of recti- 
tude, — by respecting his duties as well as his 
rights, and especially by separating moral agita- 



THE PEACEMAKERS. 129 

tion from physical violence; and a personal 
refusal to do wrong from a public incitement to 
rebellion and force. 

In public and in private relations, then, we 
see the general disposition of the man who 
cherishes the spirit of Christian peaceableness. 
That spirit is not one of guilty indifference, or 
moral disloyalty; it does not forbid truthful, 
earnest speech, and free moral agitation, without 
which we should lose one of the grandest ele- 
ments of pubhc and private existence; but it 
prohibits a crowding selfishness, an over-sensitive 
individuality, and the whole tribe of irritable 
and imperious passions ; and inspires a man with 
the sentiment of obedience, and conciliation, and 
patience, and self-sacrifice. And such is the 
method of him to whom pertains the Beatitude 
announced in the text, so far as his own conduct 
alone is concerned 

But I remark, in the second place, that he is 

not only peaceable in himself, — he is a ijromoter 

of "peace. This characteristic seems more 

especially set forth by the term in the text as it 

9 



180 THE BEATITUDES, 

is translated, ^'Peacemaker; " and if we inter- 
pret- the original by the only analogous word 
found in the New Testament, it certainly bears 
this sense. He, then, who is a subject of the 
blessing, has pot merely a negative or passive, 
but an active spirit of peace. He labors to make 
others peaceable ; and, in the first place, in pri- 
vate relations, between man and man. And how 
much this kind of agency may accomplish, we 
can judge by considering the efiects produced by a 
contrary disposition, — how easily and how widely 
the seeds of discord are sown abroad by a mis- 
chievous or malignant temper, and a tattling 
tongue. For there are those who seem to feed 
upon the quarrels of individuals and the discords 
of neighborhoods, — who take a cruel pleasure 
in retailing criticisms, insinuating suspicions, 
dislocating confidence, and fanning the embers 
of dissension. There is no more dangerous, as 
there is no more despicable, class of persons, than 
those messengers of feud and falsehood, those 
animated spinning-wheels of slander, whose eyes 
and lips are perpetually busy with mischief; 



Mie PEACiEMAKERS. ISl 

who spend tlieir days in construing hints and inter- 
preting ambiguous speeches, and in carrying fuel 
for strife. They do not always go deliberately 
about the business; not always, perhaps, from 
sheer purpose of creating discord; but this is 
the actual result of their interference. They 
either kindle the blaze, or keep it burning. Their 
words are inflammable. They carry coals of 
fire in the very skirts of their garments. And 
when we consider how easily such dissensions are 
excited, how words and actions may be misinter- 
preted, how encomiums of the dearest friend, by 
a false emphasis, or by being torn from their 
connection, may be sharpened into rankling 
arrows, we do not wonder at the success of the 
strife-makers. 

On the other hand, then, how blessed are the 
labors of the peacemaker; and what an oppor- 
tunity lies open to us in the performance of his 
work, — the work of him who, without impertinent 
intrusion, goes about to heal these social wounds, 
to knit again these dissevered ties, to suggest 
some reasonable excusCj to point out some pal- 



132 ran BEATITtDHS. 

liating circumstance, and help man look ttpon 
his brother man fhrough the sunshine of a con- 
siderate and forgiving charity ! 

And when we consider the eyils of these dis- 
cords and aberrations, — how they have separated 
chief friends, and created the bitterest enmities ; 
when we consider all their work in inward 
passion and external violence ; when we think 
how they have darkened whole lives, and quenched 
the fires on cheerful hearth-stones, and turned 
love to hatred, and kindness to gall, and broken 
hearts too tender to bear up under their mask of 
pride ; — and when we think how one mediating 
word or action might have snatched the dying 
into life, or buried hateful memories forever in 
the grave ; when we reflect how much of guilt 
and misery prevailing at this hour is rooted in 
human dissension,— are we not ready to exclaim, 
^'Blessed are the peacemakers!" 

But the subject of this Beatitude does not 
confine his efibrts for peace to the field of his 
personal control or observation. So far as his 
iafluence will go, he labors to promote it in the 



THE PEACEMAKERS. 133 

world at large. He is the active and consistent 
opponent of War. that armed quarrel between 
nations, as much more horrible than strife be- 
tween individuals, as the action is wider and 
more deadly. He puts forth what strength he 
can to arrest that form of desolation which, for 
so many thousand years, has gone forth in the 
^arth like death on the pale horse, trampling 
upon all the sanctities of humanity, and letting 
loose its foulest passions. He does what he can 
to strip the mask from its false glory, — to show 
how the victor's laurels grow in blood, and 
national greatness is built on human bones. 
There are cases, to be sure, when war does not 
wear its usual aspect, — when it appears as the 
last desperate resort of liberty, and when the 
philanthropist may well ask whether it is not a 
necessary working of that law which says, 
^^ First pure, then peaceable." But, whatever 
qualification may be admitted, the peacemaker 
knows that the spirit of Christianity, the tend- 
ency of its true operation in the world, is 
against this embattled strife which involves ele- 



134 THE BEATITUDES. 

ments that run athwart its purpose. The gos- 
pel has but a forced alliance with war. Its 
doctrine of human brotherhood would ring 
strangely between the opposed ranks. The bel- 
lowing speech of cannon, and the baptism of 
blood, mock its liturgies and sacraments. Its 
gentle Beatitudes would hardly serve as mottoes 
for defiant banners, nor its list of graces as 
names for ships-of-the-line. 

And an end to war is not a hopeless, or even 
a distant result. National sins are sooner re- 
moved than individual guilt, and the pubhc sense 
is in advance of private practice. The comple- 
tion of that result rests with those who have the 
Bible and the agents of civilization in one hand, 
and the implements of war in the other. 

And among the nations of the earth there is a 
growing disposition for amity, — a disposition 
quickened by the close communication and the 
mingling interests of the time. What signs and 
symbols of harmony are these crystal palaces 
of our day ! They stand not merely to enshrine 
the industry of the nineteenth century, and to 



THE PEACEMAKERS. 135 

illustrate the skill of different races. The 
nations meet there as beneath the broad dome of 
universal peace. Mags that have tossed defiance 
to each other on the crests of battle dally to- 
gether in the summer breeze. Ships that once 
belched destruction from their ports have low- 
ered over their grim sides the symbols of con- 
structive art, and the golden links of universal 
labor, declaring that the end of human endeavor 
is not to mar, but to create. Let the past bring 
its glories of desolation, its history of blood. In 
these achievements of the 'present^ these forms 
of crystal, we behold the clear reflection of the 
future^ when all over the broad earth men shall 
dwell together, surrounded by symbols of broth- 
erhood, and of indissoluble unity. Then shall 

'* The "war-drum throb no longer, and the battle-flag be 

furled 
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." 

And, without indicating other signs of this 
consummation, the peacemaker draws courage 
for his work from the progress of the gospel. 



186 THE BEATITUDES. 

Christianity is authenticated not only by its ful- 
filled but by its 2^?zfulfilled mission, — in its 
grandeur, its scope, its universality, — and he 
trusts that, in the operation of its spirit, the 
time will come when earth's glory shall not rest 
upon charnels of slaughter, nor its harvests grow 
luxuriant from fields of the slain; when '' they 
shall beat their swords into ploughshares and 
their spears into pruning-hooks ; nation shall not 
lift up sword against nation, neither shall they 
learn war any more." In this hope, then, as 
well as in the spirit of his labor, blessed is the 
peacemaker ! 

I remark, finally and briefly, that he to whom 
this Beautitude applies is not only peaceable and 
a promoter of peace, but is peaceful. There is 
harmony and rest in his soul ; a peace which is 
perfectly consistent wdth the highest activity, 
and with strenuous effort. There is the peace 
of indifference, which prevails in the unconscious- 
ness or suppression of a portion of our nature. 
There is the peace of indulgence and sluggish 
ease. But there is a wide difference between 



THE PEACEMAKERS. 137 

such states of mind and tlie intense joy, the pro- 
found serenity, the freedom from unrestrained 
appetites and warring passions, which flow from 
the essential spirit of the peacemaker. The 
peace, not of innocence, but of effort and of vir- 
tue, — that conscious harmony with the Deity, 
and with all good, which passeth all understand- 
ing. 

My friends, is ours the blessing of the peace- 
maker ? Not if we are the slaves of evil passion ; 
not if we are vexed by discontent, or troubled 
by a violated conscience. For an inward har- 
mony, which produces all outward fruits of 
sweetness and of noble endeavor, is the profound 
characteristic and beatitude of those who are 
truly the children of God. 



VIII. 

THE BLESSING OF THE PERSECUTED. 



Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness* 
sake : for theirs is the kingdom of hearen. — Matthew 5 : 
10. 

IN" the two succeeding verses, Jesus more 
directly addresses his disciples, and applies 
the general truth set forth in this. ^^ Blessed 
are j/e," adds he, '^ when men shall revile you, 
and persecute you, and shall say all manner of 
evil against you falsely, for my sake. Re- 
joice, and be exceeding glad : for great is your 
reward in heaven ; for so persecuted they the 
prophets which were before you." I have 
selected the text, therefore, as embodying the 
spirit of the whole passage of which it forms a 
part, and with which these Beatitudes close. 



THE PERSECUTED. 139 

And. it may be observedj in the outset, that 
the words before us illustrate the preceding 
declaration ; or, at least, indicate its limits. 
They show what qualifications consist with the 
principle, and how far one may maintain the 
habit of peace. We are not to be reconciled 
with iniquity, we are not to compromise right- 
eousness ; and if thus, in the steadfast practice and 
the bold proclamation of the truth, it proves a 
sword^ so must it be, — for this condition also 
there is a blessing. There are occasions when 
men must be shaken out of the sockets of con- 
ventional quietude and social ease, and the bene- 
diction of the peacemaker be gained in the bene- 
diction of the persecuted. 

Certainly this was the experience of a great 
number of the early disciples, who were called 
not only to cherish Christ's' spirit, but to en- 
dure his cross. Before those who professed or 
remained true to his* name there opened a red 
and fearful path, bordered by Gentile ignorance 
and Jewish hatred; a path in which lay the 
sprinkled robes of Stephen, and the career of 



140 THE BEATITUDES. 

the persecuting and persecuted Paul ; which 
Nero illuminated with ghastly torch-light, and 
his successors strewed with flame and blood. 
The number of those who suflered death in those 
early ages may have been exaggerated; but 
doubtless many plucked the martyr's crown, 
while the name of Christian was the signal for 
scorn and violence. And many, we may believe, 
as they bowed to the sword, or met the jaws of 
the wild beast, recollected their Saviour's words, 
and were able to '^rejoice, and be exceeding 
glad," thus to be enrolled in the same bloody 
testimony with ^^ the prophets which were before 
them" and the Master whose cause they served. 
They proved the truth of this Beatitude at the 
stake, and snatched the promised bliss from 
wreaths of fire. 

But I need not enlarge upon the great fact 
of persecution for opinion's sake and for right- 
eousness' sake. It stands out too prominently 
on the field of history to require this. Not 
always involved directly with religion, it has 
attended almost every new truth or fresh moral 



THE PERSECtJTEI). 141 

effort. The reformer has had to undergo, in 
forms more or less intensOj the experience of the 
martyr ; and the foundations of many a cause 
now strong and flourishing were laid in tears 
and blood* - 

It may be more interesting to ask ourselves 
why this should be so, and what is the spring 
and spirit of persecution. Why does truth 
meet with such opposition; why are men so 
blind to their best good; and why do they so 
often maltreat their truest benefactors ? It may 
be diflScult to analyze these phenomena, — to 
answer these questions in every particular ; 
but I would say, generally, that a fruitful source 
of persecution exists in the complexity and per- 
versity of human nature. If man were all 
intellect, or truth simply an object of intellect- 
ual perception, it would encounter no more 
difficulty than that which attends a mathemati- 
cal proposition. If the heart was pure, we 
should recognize the genuine tokens of moral 
excellence, and render spontaneous homage. 
But the mind's eye is colored, and the moral 



142 THE BEATITUDES. 

sense is blunted, by innumerable passions : by 
subtle deceits of interest; by the stubbornness 
of pride; by falsities of prejudice; by the 
predominance of a sensual nature, and the dis- 
ease of a biased will. Probably, in no instance 
has man acted against goodness and truth, as 
such, — that is, in direct and conscious opposi- 
tion ; but, often, from the promptings of selfish 
instinct, or the recklessness of his lower nature, 
without asking the moral quality of that which 
he opposed. It is likely that no great truth 
ever breaks into the world without disturbing 
somebody's temporal ease, or gain, — at least, no 
moral truth ever does. But, too generally, this 
ease or gain is the standard of human motive. 
Men, not occupying the high stand-point of 
reason and conscience, — never ascending into 
this region, but looking merely through the 
medium of interest, or appetite,— • of course 
rally all their force to resist any innovation that 
touches their comforts or their profits. For 
instance, how many are there engaged in the 
traffic in ardent spirits, who have never thought 



THE PEKSBCUTED. 143 

of the moral bearings of the questioiij — upon 
whose minds the idea of applymg the test of 
absolute right has hardly dawned ! They see 
nothing of the temperance reformation, there- 
fore, as a doctrine of positive rectitude, or as a 
claim of universal humanity taking precedence of 
any merely selfish interest ; but as a movement 
which affects their gains; and, therefore, they 
are far more likely to mob the advocate of total 
abstinence than to demolish their liquor-casks, 
or empty their decanters. This explains the 
conduct of Demetrius. He did not test the 
labors of Paul by the standard of reason and 
absolute right ; but the element aroused in his 
bosom by the apostle's teachings was an alarmed 
self-interest ; — this absorbed everything else. 
He did not stop to weigh those words as appeals 
of truth ; he did not ask whether that heroic ear- 
nestness was not the offspring of living convic- 
tion, the expression of a soul that had seen and 
been stirred up by eternal realities ; he only 
knew that they injured his craft, — that those 
doctrines of Christ and the resurrection lessened 



144 THE BEATITUDES. 

the demand for silver shrines. And here — for 
human nature is the same in all ages — is one 
element of persecution,— a selfish and sensual 
standard of thought and action, which sees not 
the moral excellence of a cause, or cares not for 
its absolute truth, but, feeling its pressure upon 
worldly interests, wars against it. So men 
oppose the march of righteousness with a barri- 
cade of money-bags ; so they set up the mar- 
ket value of iniquity against the eternal registry 
of God ; so they cover some popular wrong with 
the insignia of national glory, and arouse in its 
behalf all the energy of patriotism and public 
spirit ; so, with the instinct of an interested 
caste,^hey endow vested rights and false insti- 
tutions with borrowed sanctities, and make the 
truth which threatens these to be an impious 
heresy or a pernicious lie. 

But there are other elements in persecution, — 
which, perhaps, in order to make a ^vide-spread 
persecution, must be combined, and foment to- 
gether. There is ignorance ^^ darkening counsel 
by words without knowledge ; " that huge tract 



THE PEKSECUTEB. 145 

of chaotic energy, so terribly dangerous to every 
true interest of man and the state, — that vast, 
void field, ready to be peopled by any shape, to 
be heaved by any sentiment, which a cunning 
influence may engender. There is prejudice or 
preconception obstinately putting its own inter- 
pretation upon persons and principles ; seeing 
these not as they are, but as it thinks they are, 
— so that faith appears as infidelity, and the 
Redeemer is regarded as a malefactor. There 
is pride of opinion, unconsciously limiting the 
sphere of reality, and resisting the power which 
would strip off its arrogant conceit, and expose 
its mistakes. These, which may admit of a 
much finer analysis, and resolve themselves into 
more subtile principles, — these, more or less 
implicated, more or less consciously working, — 
will probably be detected as elements in any act 
of persecution. 

And, influenced by some of these elements, 
we know that men have wielded the rod of per- 
secution conscientiously, from what they deemed 
motives of religion and the public good. This 
10 



146 THE BEATITUDES. 

has sometimes been the case with the best 
of men; nay, the act of persecution was an 
evidence of their moral sensitiveness. Paul ex- 
ercised the same conscientiousness in using the 
sword that he did in bearing the cross. He 
*' verily thought he did God service; " and this 
will explain the fact that the Christians suffered 
under the administration of men like Trajan, 
and Plinjj and Marcus Aurelius, while under 
the brutal Commodus or Heliogabalus they en- 
joyed comparative repose. 

But to whatever springs we may trace the act 
of persecution, — whether it be the offspring of a 
base self-interest or a devout superstition, wheth- 
er it manifest itself as the insane fury of a 
mob, or as the vindictive energy or deluded 
judgment of the church or the state, — certainly, 
it is one of the most humiliating phenomena in 
human history and in human nature. It re- 
bukes the pride of reason, and exposes the evil 
of the heart. It shows, on the one hand, the 
insufficiency of philosophy, the fooUshness of 
learning, the weakness of even the best men; 



THE IPEESECUTllD. 147 

and, on the other, it exhibits the melancholy 
group of passions and sins that darken the men- 
tal vision, shut out the influences of holiness and 
truth, and control the will. And we are thus 
humbled especially when we trace the history 
of Christianity^ and see how that religion, which 
in all its tenor breathes the very opposite of per- 
secution, has been made the warrant of most 
horrible cruelty; when we hear the denunciations 
that have issued from the lips of those who 
represented the band of poor fishermen and 
despised peasants, and have beheld in one hand 
the fagot and the scourge, and in the other the 
meek image of the Crucified. And are we not 
constrained to say, with the poet, 

" How ill are his high teachings understood ! 

"Where he hath spoken Peace, his name hath been 
The loudest war-cry of contending men. 
Priests, pale with vigils, in his name have blest 
The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest. 
Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine. 
And crossed its blazon with the holy sign ; 
Yea, in his name who bade the erring live. 
And daily taught his lesson — to forgive ! — 



148 TBtE BEATlTtTDES. 

Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel ^ 
And, with his words of mercy on their lips, 
Hung gloating o'er the pincers' burning grips. 
And the grim horror of the straining wheel. 

The blood which mingled with the desert sand# 
And beaded with its red and ghastly dew 
The vines and olives of the Holy Land ; 
The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew ; 
The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er 
They sank beneath the crusade's holy spear ; 
Ood's dark dungeons,- — Malta's sea-washed cells? 
Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung 
Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,- 
Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell t 
The midnight of Bartholomew^ — the stake 
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame 
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake ; 
New England^s scaffold, and the priestly sneer 
Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear, 
When guilt itself a human tear might claim ; — 
Bear witness^ thou wronged and merciful One ! 
That earth's most hateful crimes have in thy name 
been done ! " * 

Andj with all the rest, there has mingled one 
master-mistake, — the notion that there is any 

* WhiUier. 



THE PERSECUTED. 149 

real force in persecution, — that it can quench and 
crush what it will. Why, it cannot destroy an 
error ; it pours oil upon the flame of the grossest 
heresy, the most absurd conceit. Much less can 
it obliterate truth from the earth, or stop its 
stupendous march. The smoke of kindled 
fagots cannot put out the stars. The devices of 
human passion, which are often the instruments 
of conscious weakness, cannot confute the reali- 
ties of God. 

My friends, the lesson is for us. For though 
advancing ages have wrought a great change as 
to the forms of persecution, too much of its 
spirit abides and operates still. Its working 
may be read not only in (Jark and stately scenes 
of history, but in common instances. It needs 
not the Roman amphitheatre, or the stake of 
Smithfield ; it needs not the fire or the sword. 
But it acts, in public or in private life, whenever 
the force of passion overwhelms the appeal of 
reason, and stops not to consult conscience ; 
wherever mere brute force interferes with moral 
agitation; where base self-interest breaks out 



150 THE BEATITUDES. 

against higher claims ; where prejudice distorts 
men and things with its own conceptions, and 
then condemns the follies and the faults it thinks 
it sees ; where an arrogant orthodoxy sits in 
judgment upon its neighbor, and, as though it 
held the keys of earth and heaven, pronounces 
his faith to be infidelity and his conviction 
contumacy, clothes itself with pompous denun- 
ciation or affected contempt, and sets in motion 
all the elements of theological bitterness and 
religious slander. The rack is broken, the 
stake is plucked up, but persecution exists. Its 
weapons are vituperation and ridicule ; excom- 
munication and mob-law ; the tongue, the pen, 
the press, and innumerable methods which can 
inflict worse than physical hurt, pierce deeper 
than the body, and leave traces darker than the 
print of the scaffold or the blasting of fire. 

My friends, in our public relations, in our pri- 
vate action, let us see to it that this spirit of 
persecution is not ours. Let us not confound 
prejudice and selfishness with the dictates of 
enlightened conscience and a lawful opposition 



THE PERSECUTED. 151 

to wrong. Let us not confound brute force and 
clamorous assertion -with moral effort and ra- 
tional assault. 

But, if the spirit of persecution exists, — 
though in different forms from those of ancient 
time, — so does the spirit of martyrdom^ for 
which the blessing is pronounced in the text; 
and its exercise is still called for. For, what is 
the essence of that temper which, in other days, 
men carried into the dungeon and the flame ? 
In the first place, it consists in the estimation of 
principle aboye all personal considerations and 
temporal interests ; so that ease, and life, and 
worldly possession, are held secondary to truth 
and duty. Those who, in the early ages of the 
church, passed through the baptism of persecu- 
tion, and were salted with fire, need only have 
spoken one little word, or given one sign, and 
their prison-doors would have been unbarred, 
and existence, liberty, family, friends, perhaps 
fortune and honor, would have been theirs. 
What charm made them choose, instead, the 
bloody circles of the arena, and the devouring 



152 THE BEATITUDES. 

fiame? It was the preciousness of principle, 
the soul's loyalty to the highest realities. When 
the young mother, Perpetua, was urged by her 
aged father to recant, she pointed to a vessel 
that lay on the ground, and. said, ^- Can I call 
this vessel anything else than what it is ? No. 
Neither can I say to you anything else than that 
I am a Christian." To the spirits that ani- 
mated such bosoms, and made such tender hearts 
firmer than tempered steel, there was no higher 
claim than the everlasting right. It could not 
be plucked from them by violence ; it could not 
be bought even by affection. 

But let me observe, here, that the true spirit 
of martyrdom forbids that selfishness which 
sometimes seeks martyrdom. For there appears 
to be a class of men who prize persecution as a 
means of notoriety ; who court it ; who in the 
missiles of denunciation hear the sound of their 
own plaudits ; and who would feed their vanity 
with the flames of their own bodies, — at least, 
in effigy. They never seem so happy as when 
tossing about in the midst of an uproar which 



THE PERSECUTED. 153 

they have teased and lashed into existence ; and 
they find no readier passport to fame than the 
reputation of suffering for conscience' sake. 
For, whatever may have been the sentiment in 
other times, there is no doubt that public feeling 
now is apt to side with the persecuted ; and our 
modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered 
with roses as with coals. Or, if he really en- 
counters some harder experience, he may well 
ask whether it is not the reaction of his own 
ostentatious bravadoes and ugly temper. The 
text contains a most important quahfication,— 
^^ Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
righteousness^ sake," — not for their own sake, 
not for the sake of their coarse abuse and blas- 
phemous ribaldry, and their strenuous endeavors 
to be persecuted. Not that the persecution of 
any is to be justified ; but all kinds of martyr- 
dom are not to be honored,-^especially amateur 
martyrdom. Christ never sought persecution, 
— he avoided it ; and we may believe that his 
true followers, who suffered for his cause, and 
acted in the spirit commended in the text, did 



154 THE BEATITUDES. 

not run to proclaim their contempt and defiance, 
but were found and taken calmly at their posts, 
and died not with thoughts intent upon the spec- 
tacle and the uproar they made, but upon that 
righteousness for which they were willing to live^ 
as well as to perish. So, my friends, if in any 
way we suffer persection, it will be well for us to 
search our motives, and inquire: ^^Is it for 
conscience sake?" 

But this adherence to principle above all self- 
ish considerations, which forms one great ele- 
ment of the martyr-spirit, presupposes another. 
Faith in principle, — faith in unseen realities, 
transcending the forms, the interests, the mate- 
rial and perishable good, of this world. The 
sufferers under persecution believed in the exist- 
ence of that kingdom whose bliss they inherited. 
0, what intense convictions to them were God, 
Heaven and Christ ! Within those scourged and 
scathed bodies what eternal facts had entered and 
become the life of the soul ! How unsubstantial 
seemed that which other men called good, com- 
pared with this joy of, experience, — how foolish 



THE PERSECUTED. 155 

to barter this inward peace for outward approval, 
— the permanent for the transient! ^^ Swear, 
curse Christ," said the proconsul to Polycarp, 
^^ and I release thee.'' ^^ Six and eighty years 
have I served him," replied the venerable disci- 
ple, ^^and he has done me nothing but good; 
and how could I curse him, my Lord and Sa- 
viour ! " And theirs was a vision that pierced 
the barriers of the grave, and saw far beyond the 
principalities and powers of the earth. Above 
the martyr's fire hovered a glory beneath which 
the splendors of this world grew dim, and his 
dripping garments turned to coronation robes. 
The dreadful amphitheatre swam away from be- 
fore his sight, the ranged spectators faded, the 
pinnacles of the celestial city gleamed upon him ; 
and he saw the angels casting down their crowns, 
he saw martyred Stephen with his beatific face, 
and the long line of prophets, who before him 
had gone up from the ordeal of blood; and 
amidst the taunts and the accusations, and before 
the open jaws of death, he was able to ^' rejoice," 
yea, to ^^be exceeding glad." 



156 THE BEATITUDES. 

And, my friends, if, as I have shown, the 
spirit of persecution may prevail at the present 
day, so is there need of the martyr spirit. 
Those who would live truly in the present world 
and the present age must cherish the same ad- 
herence to principle, the same faith in eternal 
verities, with those heroic sujBferers of the olden 
time. And still there are trials of this faith. 
True men now are apt to be persecuted, though 
not ostentatiously seeking it. It may not be an 
invariable test, but certainly there is a ground of 
doubt as to \hQ faithfulness of that man whose 
way in the world is always smooth and easy. 
At least, let any one endeavor, every day, amidst 
the transactions of business, politics, social inter- 
course, to live out the best convictions of his 
heart, ^ — let him be actually a confessor as well as 
a jorofessor, — and see if he will suffer no perse- 
cution. See if he is not called hard names, and 
charged with hard things, and if he does not find 
flint and thorns springing up in his way. 

But, my friends, however we may fare in 
this respect, let the essential spring of the mar- 



DHE PERSECOTEB. 157 

tyr-spirit be cherished by us all. Let us appre- 
hend the reality of spiritual facts, and that 
righteousness is worth more than everything 
else. Then, if ^' clear skies and seasons calm " 
are ours, manliness will also be ours, and Chris- 
tianity, and peace with conscience ; and if perse- 
cution falls to our lot, we shall still foretaste the 
eternity and excellence of the Heavenly King- 
dom. We shall discern Truth behind every 
shadow, emerging, moving onward through the 
firmamental sweep of the ages, and the inaccessi- 
ble heights of God. And remember, ye who 
really suffer for the right and the good, ^^So 
persecuted they the Prophets who were before 
you.'' 

Such, my friends, are some of the suggestions 
afforded us by that list of Beatitudes, with the 
last of which we now pause. They illustrate a 
circle of graces which are not mere ornaments of 
character, but deep influences of spiritual bliss 
and power, which pertain to the inmost structure 
of our being. A coronet of virtues, indeed, they 



158 THE BEATITUDES. 

are ; but they are significant of intrinsic majes- 
tjj and their brilliance streams out from the 
soul. God grant 'that, as expressive of this in- 
ward excellence, they may adorn our lives ; for 
then shall we be among the blessed ! 



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